The Cold Smell of Sacred Stone

by George C. Chesbro

  “You could be right,” Veil said evenly. “But you’ll keep your eyes open, won’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “You want to look at your scar?”

  “Not really. I hope it’s sexy.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Thanks for coming up to see me, Veil, and for delivering the message. I’ll call Lippitt as soon as I get a chance and thank him, too.”

  “How about letting me take you out to dinner?”

  I shook my head. “I’d really enjoy spending some time with you, and it would be good for me, but Garth should be back in his room soon. They’ve been running tests on him all day, and I’m a little anxious to find out the results.”

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks again for driving up. I needed to see a friendly face.”

  “You’ll see me again—soon. How about if I walk you to wherever it is you’re going?”

  “I’d like that.”

  8.

  I was early, and Garth was going to be late. The guard in the kiosk had a note for me, from Tommy; Garth’s testing was going to take at least an hour longer than anticipated, and the male nurse wanted me to come up to his apartment in the staff quarters for a drink and a sandwich.

  It was kind of Tommy to extend the invitation; I didn’t feel like hanging around the clinic for an uncertain amount of time with nothing to do but worry. But I didn’t feel like hanging around with Tommy Carling either. It wasn’t company I needed, but release from the anxiety and tension inexorably building inside me. I needed exercise.

  I figured it would take me just about an hour to hoof it around the reservoir next to the hospital, if I didn’t pause to watch the birds, and that seemed about right. Walking at a fast clip, swinging my arms like a drum major and not caring how comical I might look, taking deep breaths, I zipped down the center of the main thoroughfare, turned left after I passed through the gates on the eastern side of the hospital grounds.

  Fifteen minutes later I had reached the bridge spanning the reservoir. The fast walking and deep breathing had leached away a lot of my tension, and I felt better. Not wanting to work up more of a sweat than I already had, I stopped to rest in the middle of the span, leaned on the metal railing and stared down at the surface of the water, which was glinting and moving like a chestful of living jewelry as it reflected the last slanting rays of the setting sun.

  The harsh revving of an engine in the stillness, on an otherwise empty road, startled me and made me turn to my left—not a moment too soon.

  The sun was almost directly in my eyes, so I couldn’t see who was driving the pickup truck that was barreling at high speed down the center of the road, straddling the white line; but I definitely didn’t like the looks of what I could see, and I tensed, both hands firmly placed on the top of the bridge railing, and waited, wondering whether the driver was just in a big hurry, drunk, hoping to put a bit of a scare into me, or all three. The pickup truck continued to accelerate; when it was about fifteen yards away it abruptly swerved, coming right at me.

  I went in the only direction left to me—up and over the railing. I twisted in the air, and on the way back down once again grabbed hold of the railing, saving myself a dunking. The side of the truck banged into and scraped against the railing at the spot where I had been standing only a moment before. Sparks flew and I turned my face away—but not before I had seen a large decal of the familiar RPC logo on the door of the green truck; the vehicle was part of the hospital’s maintenance fleet.

  As the track sped across the bridge, I clambered back up over the railing and stared after it as it fishtailed out of sight around a bend in the road. One of two things was true about the track, I thought; either it was stolen, or it was not. If it had been stolen, I was unlikely to find out who—purposely or not—had almost killed me. But if the track had not been stolen, it shouldn’t prove all that difficult to find out which driver had brought back a track with a badly damaged side panel.

  But first things first, I thought as I started back the way I had come. I decided I’d had enough exercise; I definitely wanted to save some energy for a spirited interrogation of the driver of the pickup truck, if I ever found him.

  “Hello, Mongo,” Garth said to me when I walked into his room at seven fifteen.

  Well, well, well.

  Garth sat at a card table which had been set up by the window, eating his dinner. The Walkman, its wires snaking up to the earphones on his head, sat next to his tray. He was still dressed in his pajamas, robe, and slippers.

  “Why don’t you sit down and eat?” Garth continued, motioning toward a second, covered, tray on the table. “Tommy brought these in only a few minutes ago, so yours should still be hot.”

  “I don’t think I’m hungry.”

  Feeling somewhat stunned by this second, abrupt change in Garth’s behavior, I eased myself down into a chair across from him at the table. Only when I was already sitting did I realize that it had not even occurred to me to do what should have seemed natural—walk up to Garth and hug him. Garth had emerged from his long, silent journey to nowhere, but now he seemed like a stranger to me; I almost felt as if I should be introduced to this man who was my brother.

  “It’s roast beef,” Garth said around a mouthful of food. “Very good.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “How did you hurt your head?”

  “Just an accident.” There were more important things than Henry Kitten to talk about. “I’m glad to see … you’re feeling better, Garth.”

  “Garth told you he could talk.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Garth had too many things on his mind; he couldn’t talk through all the thoughts.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  Garth paused with his fork halfway to his mouth, suddenly fixed me with a hard stare. Strange lights and shadows moved in his eyes. “You know,” he said, and then put the forkful of food in his mouth.

  “Yes,” I said softly. “I know. That was a stupid question. I’m sorry if I brought you pain.”

  “The pain was already there.”

  “We have to talk, Garth.”

  “We are talking, aren’t we?”

  “Can you turn that thing off for a little while?”

  “Garth would rather not,” my brother replied evenly.

  “Richard Wagner is a tough act to compete with for your attention.”

  “Garth can hear you.”

  “Garth, how are you feeling?”

  “You know how Garth is feeling.”

  “No, I don’t. I know what you were thinking about, but I don’t know how you feel now.”

  Garth pushed his tray aside, once again fixed me with a hard gaze. “Once, you would have.”

  “Jesus, Garth, are you saying that you feel the same way now as we felt when Loge showed us his film?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re feeling very bad.”

  “Yes. You could say that.”

  “If the music makes you feel bad, why do you keep listening to it?”

  “Garth must.”

  “Why?”

  “Garth must.”

  “Garth, I played that music for you because I’d hoped it would help you, not hurt you.”

  “It did help. Without the music, Garth would still be lying in bed. He would not be talking to you.”

  “Well, now that it’s done its job, maybe it’s time for you to stop listening to it.”

  “No,” Garth replied evenly. “Not listening to the music will not make the thoughts go away. That would be like killing the messenger. Siegmund Loge’s message was valid when he delivered it, and it still is. He demonstrated not only that our species is doomed, but why; one proof was mathematical, the other emotional. The music makes Garth think of that, yes; but without the music, the thoughts would be worse and Garth would sink back to the place where he was.”

  I smiled tentatively. “Listen, brother, if I’d known how my li
ttle experiment in music therapy was going to work out, I definitely wouldn’t have brought you anything stronger than ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’”

  Once, Garth would have thought that funny; now the big man with the wheat-colored hair and piercing eyes who was my brother simply stared at me, a fixed, stony expression on his face. I decided it was time to change the subject.

  “Why do you keep referring to yourself in the third person?” I continued. “What happened to ‘I’?”

  “Garth feels a great distance away, Mongo.”

  “That doesn’t seem like an answer.”

  “Garth’s ‘I’ is at the bottom of an ocean. It was too heavy. Garth had to leave ‘I’ behind in order to come back to the surface.”

  “What ocean are you talking about?”

  “Garth can say ‘I’ if it makes you feel more comfortable with him.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I said, then sighed and rolled my eyes toward the ceiling. I felt like laughing and crying at the same time. I forced myself to reach out and touch his hand, which was resting on the table next to his Walkman. The gesture felt unnatural. “I don’t want you to do me any favors, brother; I’m just trying to understand what you’re saying and feeling. I want to help Garth get his ‘I’ back.”

  “Garth’s ‘I’ is dead, Mongo. If Garth ever went back down to look for it, he’d die too. The music keeps him from sinking.”

  I sighed again, took my hand away from his. “Garth, I have to say something.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I feel like I’m talking to a stranger, and I don’t like it.”

  “Garth’s sorry he makes you uncomfortable.”

  “Don’t be sorry; it’s not your fault. I’ve been making myself uncomfortable, because I’ve been searching for some new kind of way to talk to you. If you were somebody else’s brother, I think I could do that without any trouble. I know how sick you’ve been, and I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you out of that Goddamn bed, walking around and talking—even if I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I should be patient and understanding, grateful that you’re talking at all; I should just sit here and listen, and nod my head a lot—but I can’t, Garth. I’ve got too much feeling; I can’t find a new way to talk to you. I don’t care how—or even if—you respond; I’m going to speak the way I always have to the Garth I know and love—the brother who once had a very powerful ‘I.’ It’s the only way I can deal with this situation, and with you.”

  “Garth understands,” my brother replied evenly. “You should speak to him in any way that makes you comfortable.”

  “But I want you to feel comfortable with me.”

  “Garth is not uncomfortable with you, Mongo. Garth hasn’t forgotten.”

  “You haven’t forgotten what?”

  “All that we’ve been through together, and what Garth owes you.”

  “You don’t owe me anything; if anything, it’s the other way around.”

  “Garth hasn’t forgotten how you loved and cared for him when he was sick.”

  “I still love you, and you’re still sick. And I’m still going to take care of you.”

  Garth cocked his head slightly, and a sad smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Garth feels strongly that you love and miss someone else. Garth doesn’t feel that you can love him when he has no ‘I.’”

  “Let me tell you something, brother,” I said tightly. My stomach was hurting badly, and I had to fight back tears. “My old buddy Garth is going to get his ‘I’ back. That’s a promise. If you can’t do it, and the doctors here can’t do it, then I am personally going to paddle to the bottom of whatever ocean you dropped it in and haul it back up. And I still think you should give Wagner a break for a little while. You won’t sink anywhere; I won’t let you.”

  “You should eat. The food’s very good.”

  “I don’t care how good it is,” I said curtly. “I’m not hungry, and I don’t want to eat. All I want to do is just sit here and talk to my brother.”

  Garth stared at me strangely for a long time, and then tears suddenly welled in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. “You’re a dwarf,” he murmured.

  “No shit,” I said bitterly. I knew I was behaving atrociously, and couldn’t help it. Garth’s tears had startled and frightened me. Now, for the first time, I was struck with the realization that Garth really could be insane, and might stay that way. For some reason, I felt threatened, and my immediate, defensive response was anger—and shame for the thought that it might have been better if Garth had never regained consciousness. I had never lost hope for the unconscious Garth, and now the madman sitting across from me was draining that hope away from me. “Did you just notice?”

  “But it doesn’t bother you.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Garth?”

  “You’ve never suffered because you’re a dwarf.”

  “That’s bullshit. I distinctly remember it bothering me when some of our nastier classmates in high school insisted on trying to use me for a medicine ball. You should remember, because you were the one who punched their lights out when they did it.”

  “You’ve had bad experiences, but they only made you stronger. You’re a very strong man, Mongo; you would have grown up to be a strong man in any case, but being born a dwarf made you stronger. It gave you a great challenge, something to test yourself against constantly. You’ve won. You’ve always won, because you’ve never allowed yourself to be beaten. That makes it very difficult for you to understand … the rest of us.”

  “More bullshit, Garth. I’ve been beaten down a good many times, and you damn well know it.”

  “But you always got back up again. You’ve never been crushed.”

  “Neither have you.”

  “Now Garth has been crushed.”

  “You’ve always been as strong as me, if not stronger.”

  “No. Your ‘I’ could never be lost, because you would die before you gave it up. You don’t really need anyone. You don’t need Garth.”

  “I need Garth to be well. What do you need?”

  “The reason you can’t understand is because you’ve never really suffered any serious damage to the part of you that is you. If you weren’t so strong, Garth believes you would understand what he is saying, and you would feel more comfortable with him.”

  “Garth, what do you need?”

  “Garth … just needs.”

  “You need what?”

  “Garth … isn’t certain, Mongo. Right now, he knows only that he needs this music to stay on the surface.”

  “Listen, brother,” I said through clenched teeth, “what Mongo feels right now is like punching you in the mouth, and maybe Mongo will do it if you don’t stop talking crazy. I mean it. How’s that for a therapeutic prescription?! You have to fight madness, and you’re not doing it!”

  Garth’s response was to abruptly reach up and snatch off his earphones. His hands were trembling slightly as he set the earphones down on top of the Walkman, shut the player off. He clasped his hands together on top of the table, leaned toward me.

  “Garth was lost before you brought him the music of the Ring,” my brother said in a low, earnest voice. The muscles in his jaw and throat clenched, unclenched. “He was drowning. It is impossible to describe what it was like—what Garth really means when he says ‘drowning.’ Garth’s mind was still working; he could remember killing Orville Madison, and wounding Veil Kendry, just before he … sank into this vast ocean of despair and unconsolable sadness. There was no hope in this ocean, Mongo—no reason whatsoever to live, much less to move or talk. Garth could hear voices; he knew what was happening all around him, but he couldn’t move or talk under the weight of all that sadness. He couldn’t—”

  “That’s because you’d been poisoned, Garth!”

  My brother blinked slowly, as if momentarily disoriented, then leaned back in his chair. “Yes,” he said in an odd, distant tone of voice. “Garth was poisoned by one
of two men—possibly both of them. Their names—at least the names they were using—are Larry Rhodes and Michael Watt. When Garth first started working on the case, he thought it might be a matter of one company trying to steal secrets from another. Now Garth thinks that Rhodes and Watt are foreign agents.”

  “Then you know?! You realize you’ve been poisoned, and you even know who did it?!”

  Garth shrugged, smiled faintly. “Now Garth realizes that he was being slowly poisoned, and who was doing it. The three of us were always bringing each other coffee. Garth was very stupid.”

  “It’s the poison that’s making you think the way you are, Garth! Realizing what’s been done to you is the first step in fighting back.”

  “No, Mongo. It was the poison that sent Garth to the bottom of the ocean, yes … but the ocean was always there, before the poisoning, and it was the weight of the ocean that crushed Garth and destroyed his ‘I.’”

  “You’re going to get better.”

  “Better?”

  “Yes, better.”

  “You believe Garth will somehow get ‘better’ only because you do not understand how Garth is now.”

  I sighed, shook my head. “Rhodes and Watt took off yesterday, and they’re probably already out of the country. Mr. Lippitt thinks they’re K.G.B.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “You don’t seem all that interested.”

  “Who they really are, what they did, and where they are isn’t important. They were two silly men doing silly things for silly reasons.”

  “Yeah, the problem is that they made you silly.”

  “Do you really find Garth silly, Mongo?”

  “Damn it, you know I don’t! But the poison they fed you screwed up your head, and it’s still screwing up your head. You’ve got to understand and accept that if you want to get better. Unless you want the doctors here to start doping you up with psychotropic drugs, and unless you’re ready for a lengthy stay in mental hospitals like this one, you’d better start giving a lot of serious thought to attitude adjustment. You have to will yourself to fight against the effects of the poison and get better. You have to want to get better. That isn’t at all what I’m getting from you now.”