The Good Humor Man

by Andrew Fox

  I find Joseph sprawled on the floor. A broken RM helmet lies next to his head. He doesn’t look much different from his final projection, a human mountain, although only half as massive as Hud was at his zenith. I kneel next to him. His breathing and pulse are strong, but when I force his eyes open, they’ve turned up inside his head. He’s in the same state as he left Swaggart… smothered in a coma, lost to himself.

  There’s something wrong with his face, a neuromuscular degeneration, possibly the result of a stroke. It makes the left half of his doughy face sag. I can’t tell how recent the damage is. Did he suffer the stroke tonight, or had he already injured himself with the RM equipment before ever meeting me? Or did the MannaSantos researchers cause this degeneration years ago?

  It doesn’t matter. Hud, Benjamin, Joseph… I wish all three of you could’ve lived happier lives. And come to better ends.

  Staring at his lopsided face, feeling its soft folds with bruised fingertips, I realize what’s happened to my vision. My left eye has gone blind.

  CHAPTER 19

  I find a cell phone on one of the dead guards and call for an ambulance. Then I give what limited first aid I’m capable of to those men and women still clinging to life. Once I’ve done what I can, I go to meet the ambulances. I want nothing more than to lie down and sleep. But I’m afraid that if I do that, I’ll never wake up again; or I won’t wake up whole.

  The sky is just beginning to turn a lighter shade of gray. Almost morning. That’s a funny thing about spending time inside a casino; you lose all sense of time. I trudge down the long access road toward Colossal Elvis. The last time I saw him, the sun was setting on his head. Now the sun is rising between his knees.

  I shelter from the wind by huddling against his gigantic blue suede shoe. I must’ve bitten my lip while mentally fighting Joseph. My blood tastes as good as a marbled prime rib from Lansky’s. It’s good to be able to feel or taste anything. Anything.

  Muthukrishnan and his entourage arrive almost simultaneously with the ambulances. Margo has her arms around me almost before I see her door being flung open. Her hair smells of cigarette smoke. Right now it’s the most wonderful scent in the world.

  “Louis! Johnson and the others managed to overpower the guards before they could lock us away. But I was so afraid we’d be too late…”

  “Not too late,” I say, burying my nose and mouth in her hair. “I managed to pull my own fat out of the fire this time. So you figured out what I said about the Good Humor Man card?”

  “Yes…” She looks searchingly into my face. “Louis? Your voice — it sounds slurred. Did they hurt you?”

  Hearing the fright in her voice makes all the remaining strength go out of my legs. Muthukrishnan is there to help catch me. “Doctor, are you all right?”

  I don’t want to frighten Margo. But the faster I get treatment, the more chance I’ve got of retaining whatever faculties I’m left with. “I think I’ve suffered what we doctors euphemistically call a ‘neurological event.’ You’ve probably noticed I need to drop my membership in Toastmasters…”

  My feeble attempt at lightheartedness fails to lessen Margo’s shock. She whirls on Muthukrishnan. “Get one of those ambulances back here! Right now!”

  “Of course, of course,” he mumbles. He pulls a radio from its holster. She helps me to lie down, bundling her jacket beneath my head. I want to tell her not to worry, but suddenly I barely have the strength to do anything.

  A pair of feds approach Margo and me. One of them kneels down next to me. “I’m very sorry, sir,” he says, his voice gravelly and surprisingly sincere. “I’m going to have to retrieve that glass jar from you. I’ve been made to understand it’s vital to national security —”

  Margo’s fury eviscerates him. “Leave him alone! That’s not important now! Do you have any idea what he’s gone through to get that back, what it means to him —?”

  Although lifting my arms is like hoisting petrified logs, I try to soothe Margo. “No… it’s all right… let him take it. I wanted them… to have it, remember?” I have to trust someone. And besides, I’ve taken precautions, in case my trust is misplaced.

  The FBI man gently removes the Elvis from its harness. Suddenly he looks like a middle-aged Sam Phillips, the visionary owner of Sun Studios who recorded Elvis’s first hit records, and I’m both comforted and reassured. I remember the miracle of the loaves and fishes… from a tiny morsel, Elvis will nourish the world.

  Brain scans bear out what I already knew. I’ve suffered a stroke. Not a major one, but not one I’ll soon forget. With months of therapy, I should regain reasonably normal speaking abilities. The blindness in my left eye, alas, is irreversible.

  Muthukrishnan is good enough to hold off conducting my debriefing until after my initial treatment is done with. Then he and the lead FBI man shoo the nurses from my room. Harri and Margo are allowed to be present, since they are also being debriefed. I tell them everything that happened in the Viva Las Vegas Theater. With my good eye, I watch Harri’s face. She hasn’t aged well, sad to say. Her sense of horror and self-loathing as I tell Joseph’s tale is as apparent to me as my own semi-blindness. She was more deeply implicated in all this than I ever would have imagined.

  I don’t like thinking other that way. “Harri,” I say, “what I brought for you, is it everything you need?”

  “All of our initial tests have been positive,” she says. She won’t meet my one good eye. “If we work around the clock, we should be able to design a counteragent within the month. Have it field-tested within three or four, and, God willing, have it ready to run by the next growing season.”

  She tries to sound enthusiastic. But all I hear is exhausted, guilty relief.

  “Dr. Shmalzberg, how sad that you chose not to trust me when we first met,” Muthukrishnan says. “You could’ve avoided much pain and trouble.”

  “But we wouldn’t have learned anything about Joseph,” I say, concentrating on controlling the movements of my tongue and lips. “He would’ve remained free to sabotage the use of the Elvis, just as he did the rest of MannaSantos’s recovery efforts.”

  Margo doesn’t look well; she’s pale, and all morning she’s been much more quiet than usual. But now she interjects. “Mr. Muthukrishnan, every step of the journeys we take is necessary. Louis had to meet Ms. Denoux in New Orleans. He had to meet me and confront Dr. Trotmann. He had to suffer at the hands of… of that horrible Mr. Walterson.” She haltingly takes my hand, more shy than she’s seemed since we first met. Does Harri’s presence make her nervous? “He still has great things to do. Without those painful steps he’s taken, he wouldn’t have grown into the man he needs to be.”

  Margo’s belief in me still stuns me. I hear Harri’s barely suppressed sigh, rich with irritation, and perhaps other emotions, too. Muthukrishnan smiles; he looks upon Margo as though she’s a charming child who’s just delivered an adroit performance. “My devout Hindu parents would have expressed very much the same sentiments. They were quite disappointed when I decided to retrace an old family pattern and emigrate to the U.S. They believed I was predestined for other things, grander things. I, however, still believed in the tarnished promise of America.”

  “You can’t very well blame me for mistrusting you,” I say, “not after that visitation I got from the Caliphate’s emissary.”

  Muthukrishnan sniffs. “I would think a man of your education and background would know better than to tar all ‘foreigners’ with the same brush. I was invited to your country to fill a vital position for which a native-born worker could not be found.”

  “Do you know what happened to the Frenchman who was chasing me? Is he dead?”

  The FBI man, quiet for a long time, answers. “Mr. Quant is very resilient. He survived three bullet wounds, a broken sternum, and two broken legs. Caliphate embassy personnel sealed him off before we could learn more than his name. They intimated that his attempted assassination would spark an international crisis. But they stopped makin
g noises when we let them know that one of his two shooting victims in Pensacola had also survived and is available to testify against him. Diplomatic immunity only goes so far. They bundled Quant onto the next available medical flight to Paris.”

  My heart jumped when he mentioned the Ottoman’s victims. “Mitch Reynolds — is he alive?”

  He nods. “As of last night, Reynolds was in stable condition. His doctors told me he wouldn’t have pulled through without that first aid you gave him. Quant was a nasty piece of work, relying on Reynolds to track you across the country, and then cutting him down. By the way, those guys from Graceland traced you to the casino the same way we did. We were able to talk to one of them this morning.”

  “Swaggart?”

  “Not him. He didn’t pull through. One of the guys wearing an Elvis suit. He told us that somewhere between Memphis and Miami, they noticed their satellite radio picked up strange interference in its lower bands whenever they were within a mile of your car. Swaggart had mentioned that you were a Good Humor Man, and the other Elvis look-alike used to be one, too. He remembered the badges and their GPS locators. That’s how they tracked you in Vegas.”

  Swaggart. I might owe my survival to that neurotic corporate toady. I wonder if it was worth it to him, all those years of sucking up to Elvis’s descendants, trying to redeem his father’s thankless career…

  Dad. So much has happened in the last week that I haven’t even thought about him. “Mr. Muthukrishnan, I have to call the Pacific Vistas Convalescent Complex. My father —”

  Harri raises her hands to calm me. “It’s all right, Louis. I called there this morning. He’s doing fine. The dietary supplements you ordered are keeping his weight stable, at least for now.”

  My relief is deep, but fleeting. What about the millions of elderly Americans who don’t have physician sons to bully their nurses into ordering dietary supplements? How long will it take for the ghost of Elvis’s breakfast to saddle up and ride to the rescue? “Harri, once the counteragent is released, how many months will it take to spread throughout the food chain?”

  Every furrow in her careworn face deepens. “We’re still working on the models… It’s taken Metaboloft almost three years to spread from the Midwest corn-growing regions to its current dispersion path. Right now, the primary infestation covers most of the continental U.S. Pockets of infestation have been rumored as far afield as Central America.” She bites her lower lip. “We’ll have the advantage with the new agent of being able to plant it in multiple regions, and we should be able to affix it to a variety of plant forms. But even so… under best-case scenarios, which we aren’t assured of having, the earliest I’d venture to predict we could have Metaboloft completely squelched is two years.”

  “Two years — !” I can’t get the gaunt faces of my father’s wardmates out of my mind. “There could be a bigger death toll than anything this country’s seen since the 1918 influenza epidemic. You said the Metaboloft effect is self-reinforcing; the more a person eats it, the faster his basal metabolism accelerates. You can’t let this go on for two years — crops have to be burned, foods have to be pulled from the shelves. Mr. Muthukrishnan, what does the government plan to do?”

  “Certainly nothing like what you suggest.” His face turns severe. “Do you realize the chaos such steps would bring? You fear the starvation of a few million? What about the starvation of tens of millions? Because that will surely be the result should word of this outbreak become common knowledge. No other nation on earth has the spare agricultural capacity to feed America in addition to itself. Start burning crops and the contents of supermarkets, and the ensuing panic and economic disruption will accomplish much of Joseph Walterson’s goal a good deal faster than he had planned. The survivors will look back upon the GD2 years as a golden age, by comparison.”

  “But you can’t sit back and do nothing!”

  “I in no way meant to imply that we would do nothing. We already know that the elderly, young children, and the sick are in the most immediate danger. My agency will work discreetly to ensure that caloric supplements and drug cocktails which can retard metabolic rates are made available to the most vulnerable. America was the first nation to land astronauts on the moon. Certainly we can build a few dozen factories to manufacture weight-gain powders in the required time frame.”

  Maybe. But can you turn around a nation’s destructive thought patterns in just a few months, without letting the citizenry know they’re battling a plague?

  Word of all this will get out. If not from my mouth, then a dozen others. Too many hands have already touched Metaboloft. Involving the nation’s doctors, no matter how discreetly, ensures that a platoon of whistle-blowers will emerge to tell the tale, no matter what the consequences.

  But if a certain amount of chaos is unavoidable, maybe I can make it work for the good of us all. Maybe what we need is a storm of nationwide panic to blow away what’s turned rotten and malignant in the last twenty-five years.

  “What does the government plan to do about the Good Humor Men?” I ask. “The illicit foodstuffs they burn are the very things that could be saving people’s lives.”

  Muthukrishnan looks to the FBI man for a reply. The agent shrugs his shoulders. “The Good Humor Men are officially deputized by state and local governments. You want to get rid of them, you don’t start with us feds. You’d have to get campaigns rolling in almost all fifty states.”

  “But the President and Congress could encourage state legislatures to reconsider the vigilantes’ legal authority,” I say. “The biggest stick Good Humor squads wield is their ability to confiscate health cards. What do you think would happen if Congress told the states they were withholding insurance pool grants to any state that continues sanctioning the food police?”

  Muthukrishnan is momentarily quiet, but I can see that I’ve gotten the cogs of his sharp mind turning. “I will take your suggestions under advisement, Dr. Shmalzberg. But my agency’s ability to sway the political process is limited. Congress will be emboldened to act on the issue of the Good Humor Men if there is a groundswell of public opinion demanding action. Given your passion and experience, I would suggest that you would make an ideal candidate to rouse such opinion.”

  Is he out of his mind? I just suffered a stroke, I’m half-blind… But the more I think about it, the less ludicrous his suggestion seems. What Margo said just a few minutes ago, words that even I dismissed as naive enthusiasm, now sounds like the preamble to a calling.

  I’ve been called. I can’t hide from that.

  “I… I’ll take your suggestion under advisement, Mr. Muthukrishnan.”

  “Very good.” He gathers his recorder and papers into a briefcase. “We shall remain in touch, Doctor. Mr. Bergeron, do you have any final words for Dr. Shmalzberg?”

  His companion rearranges his gun holster before putting on his coat. “If I were you,” he tells me, “I’d take our directive of confidentiality very seriously. One word of any of this to the media, and you’ll end up doing your rehab in San Quentin Federal Detention.”

  When the door closes behind them, Harri exhales with relief. “Lovely bedside manner,” she says.

  I don’t answer her, because Margo has gone even more pale. Her forehead glistens with a sheen of sweat. “Margo, are you all right?”

  She shakes her head. “I’ll — I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I just need a glass of water. Be back in a minute…”

  She bolts out the door. That wasn’t just a glass of water she’s after. Harri comes to sit by my bedside. “You collect interesting friends, Louis.” Her tone isn’t entirely unkind.

  “I’m worried about her. It could be all the stress of the last few days. But she hasn’t been the same.”

  She clucks her tongue. “The same as what? How long have you known her? A week? For all you know, she could be like this all the time. An odd bird.” She laughs, sounding both cynical and tired. “It’s been a long time since I was that young and unformed.” She stares a
t the door, then takes her glasses off and wipes them with a tissue. “I think she may be in love with you. Cradle-robbing never had pride of place among your perversions before. How do you feel about her?”

  “She saved my life.”

  “That’s beside the point. Do you love her?”

  Do I? In little more than a week, I’ve memorized the sounds of her breathing, the scents of her skin and hair. Three times I’ve been reunited with her after I’d been close enough to Death to touch the hem of his cloak. Cannula in hand, I’ve shared with her the most intimate moments I can conceive. And she has shown me a path for the remainder of my days.

  Emily, as much as I love you, as much as I miss you… I’m giving myself permission to love another.

  “Yes,” I say. “I believe I do.”

  “Oh.” Harri smiles tightly and almost imperceptibly shakes her head. “Well. Good luck, then. I’ve always thought that… once we reach a certain age, we’ve made too many compromises, sold too many shares of our souls to truly connect anymore with the young. Good luck to you.”

  I tell myself she’s trying to be kind. But her accusing tone disturbs me. “Harri, why didn’t you ever tell me you were married to Theodore Weiss?”

  Immediately, her wounded expression makes me sorry I asked. “That… wasn’t a happy time in my life. If you and I had dated longer… well, I’m sure I would’ve mentioned Ted eventually.”

  “How much did you know about Weiss’s work? About the Walterson cloning project?”

  Her cheek twitches. “I’m not going to lie to you,” she says. “Although I wasn’t on the team that Ted headed up, my team’s researches benefited greatly from his work. He was proud of the project, but I could tell he was suffering from guilt, too. I did some poking around. I saw the test subjects myself, what was being done to them. I tried to convince Ted that what the company was doing was immoral. We fought about it for months. That was pretty much the final nail in our already wobbly marriage.”