Mindkiller

by Spider Robinson

  Nova Scotia winter is savage and merciless, and every year the same thing happens: spring, heeding the frantic prayers of the cabinbound, comes forth to do battle with winter much too early—about the end of January or early February—and is utterly destroyed within a week or two. Thaw, as the period is called, is a pleasant time, but subsequent to it, winter returns with redoubled ferocity and remains until about mid-June, when it suddenly gives way to summer without transition. Norman could not be sure, but it felt as though this were one of the last days of Thaw. Good reason to get up and resume the hunt, before the hammer came down and made everything more complicated.

  Yet he could not get up. Norman Kent had not felt good in quite some time, and right now he felt very good. He had self-worth. He felt fast and tricky and lucky and dangerous. He remembered flashes of a similar feeling from eight years ago, from his earliest days as a grunt in Africa. But this was different, was better. This time he understood what he was fighting for, knew his enemy to be genuinely evil, this time he was a volunteer! The old skills were coming back, he could feel it. All the mad activity of the last several months had formed a kind of Basic Training, leaning him down and toughening him up, and with the return of good physical condition came muscle-memories of deadly games once taught him by weary old professionals and by clever enemies. He expected to die on this venture—but he was certain that Jacques would predecease him. Norman was even fairly sure that he could manage to persuade Jacques to answer a number of questions before dying.

  At last he had drunk his fill of the place. He rose as the sun’s last gleam winked out, stretched carefully, and clambered up over vast white driftwood mounds to the marsh flats and the road beyond. He made his way with care, for he did not know this ground; although he was in a beautiful spot, he was not in Paradise.

  Norman’s own getaway cabin was in Paradise. Its postal address was Rural Route 2, Paradise, Nova Scotia—although in fact it was situated well up over the North Mountain from that sleepy and well named little Annapolis Valley community. The cabin could be reached by foot, four-wheel drive, or horseback. It was heated by wood, powered by Canadian Tire solar collector and wood-alcohol combustion, had neither telephone nor television. Norman never considered going anywhere near it. It is said around the Valley that if a man breaks wind on the North Mountain, noses will wrinkle on the South Mountain. Norman was entirely too well known around Paradise, and even if he had reached the cabin unobserved he could not have hidden his chimney smoke.

  Phinney’s Cove, his target area, lay about twenty kilometers west of his cabin, just inside the radius within which Norman could reasonably expect to meet someone he knew along the road, and thus come to the attention of the jungle drums. So instead of hitching the North Shore routes, Norman had followed the province’s southern coast, then taken 8 North past Kejimkujik National Park and crossed the North Mountain at Annapolis Royal, some fifteen klicks west of Phinney’s Cove—avoiding the region where he was known, and approaching Jacques from the opposite direction. He was now on a part of the shore called Delap’s Cove.

  But the fact that he was not known here did not mean that he did not know anyone here. Civilization on the North Mountain is spread thin, scattered so widely that anyone who has lived there for any length of time comes to know at least a few people who live many klicks from his home. Norman had once needed water found, and so he had come to know old Bert Manchette.

  He crossed the Shore Road (only the Tourist Bureau called it “The Fundy Trail” anymore) and entered the woods. The ground rose steadily before him; he was now climbing the gentle slope of the Mountain’s north face. Fifty yards in from the road, well out of sight of passing traffic (perhaps one car per hour), he found a distinctive stand of white birch. He stopped, took two balled-up green plastic garbage sacks from his backpack, and shook them out. He removed a few hundred dollars from his suitcase of cash, sealed the case with a combination lock, and double-bagged it tightly against moisture. Then he rammed it beneath a rotting deadfall and concealed it with dead leaves and bark. He had marked the spot where he had entered the woods; nonetheless, knowing from experience how hard it can be to locate a particular patch of forest again, he used the woodsman’s knife that now hung at his hip to blaze a few of the surrounding birch—about a meter above eye level, where the scores might go unnoticed by another.

  He continued on uphill. The sun was well and truly down now, and the moon not yet risen; yet the darkness was far from total. The sky was clear, the branches naked overhead, and a city dweller might be astonished by the amount of starlight to be found in a forest. And Norman could hardly have gotten lost. The directions to Bert’s were simple: proceed uphill until you strike the old overgrown road, then follow it east until you reach the ruins of the mill. Straight uphill from there half a klick to Bert’s Ridge, and holloa the house from just outside buckshot range.

  The walk gave rise to thoughts about eternity and entropy. Once this whole forest had been settled and populated. The overgrown trail Norman walked had once been a busy road, bustling with carts and buggies and wagons and hitched oxen and running children. Then, more than sixty years ago, for reasons Norman still did not fully understand, the Mountain community had died back. The people had all…gone away. Houses fell in upon themselves. Cultivated fields vanished under the alders. Nature, which had been literally driven away with a pitchfork a century before, had returned as the Roman maxim prophesied.

  The region was actually less spooky by night than by day. The bones did not show—the occasional glimpse of foundation and sills in the undergrowth, the odd bottle-and-can heap, every so often an orange axe head or fitting or fastening slowly oxidizing on the ground. All of these were invisible in the dark, and Norman was able to keep mortality from the surface of his thoughts for some time. The air was inexpressibly clear and good, the smell of woods had all the subtle nuances of flavor of a truly great dessert, the earth was springy beneath his feet. Rotted leaves and branches and occasional unmelted patches of snow crunched under his boots, and the quality of the sound told him the true size of the room within which he walked. He was aware of distant deer avoiding him, and caught a brief glimpse of a weasel silhouetted against the sky.

  Then Norman heard the sound of the stream that meant he was approaching the ruined sawmill, and he was reminded of all the ghosts that lived along this road.

  He forced the thought from his mind. He drank from the stream with cupped hands, and took time to enjoy the almost forgotten taste of unchlorinated water. Then he left the stream, which cut sharply east, and struck straight uphill—giving the sawmill a wide berth.

  Norman had spent enough time in jungles and woods to know how to move without undue noise—quietly enough to sneak up on a city man, certainly—but he made no effort to use this skill as he neared the ridge. There was no telling when old Bert might take a notion to go grocery shopping, and Norman was walking through Bert’s pantry. He even went so far as to whistle, to remove the possibility of being mistaken for a moose. No moose had walked the North Mountain for twenty years or more—but there was no telling how good Bert’s memory was these days. If he still lived, of which Norman was certain only intuitively, he was a hundred and four years old.

  Norman had never, in the dozen or so times he had visited old Bert, met another guest on the Ridge, and he knew Bert seldom left it. Nonetheless the old man knew everything that happened on the North or South Mountains (he paid only slight attention to “doings” in the more civilized Valley—or indeed, anywhere else on the planet). Most every mountain dweller at least knew of him; he was a fixture, an area landmark. Most people believed him to be half crazy—but no one laughed at his dowsing rod. The cost of having a well drilled ran upwards of thirty dollars a meter these days, and a man fool enough to sink a well without consulting Bert might easily rack up three or four thirty-meter dry holes before getting lucky. Enough money can make even the most cynical superstitious.

  Five years ago, Norman had heede
d the earnest counsel of his friend Bear, and told the men to drill where Bert said to drill. He had seen the drill-boss’s face change when he gave the order, and so he had been prepared when they struck sweet water at four and a half meters. The next day Norman had fetched a bottle of good Cointreau up to Bert’s Ridge, and stayed long enough to annoy hell out of Lois.

  He smiled now as he replayed for perhaps the hundredth time the memory-tape of that first visit. He had come upon old Bert, ninety-nine years old then, chainsawing logs into stove-length behind his house—with bedroom slippers on his feet. Norman had been told, by several different locals, that Bert was “some strange,” but this seemed to call for comment. “Hey, Bert,” he had hollered over the yatter of the big old Stihl saw, “didn’t you ever hear of steel-toe boots?”

  Bert had let the saw finish its cut, then throttled back to idle, thumbing the oil feed to lube the chain. Idling, the ancient Stihl sounded like a motorcycle with no muffler, but Bert’s voice had carried over it easily. “Yuh. Tried dem once.” He smiled evilly. “Dull too many blades.”

  V-rrrroooooooom, back to cutting—and how the logs had danced!

  The moon was coming up as Norman reached the Ridge. From here one could catch glimpses of the Bay through the spruce and pine. The sky was clear enough for him to make out the faint ribbon of light which was the province of New Brunswick on the horizon. The sight tempted him to stop and gawk, but he kept walking. He was pleased at how little winded he was by the climb just past, feeling his second wind strong in his chest, eager to be about his business. Bert would not mind being kept up late, but it would be impolite. Wind from the south, from the Valley—shit, that probably meant snow by morning. Oh, well.

  He was still whistling softly when he first saw the lights of Bert’s house. An instant later the whistle chopped off and he stopped in midstride. A woman crying out in pain…

  He shrugged the backpack off his shoulders and held it by its straps in his left hand; his right pulled the knife he had bought on Route 8. He used all his woodcraft now, approached Bert’s house rapidly but without ever exposing himself needlessly to fire from any direction. His awareness of the world expanded spherically. The cries came clearer as he neared the house. Sounds like upstairs. Sounds young. Sounds like someone’s beating hell out of her. Sounds like…

  All at once Norman grabbed a maple and stopped. His eyes widened. He dropped pack and knife, slapped both hands over his mouth, and quaked. He dropped to his knees, then fell over on his side.

  The cries intensified, built to one wrenching terminal shriek. Norman curled up in a ball and bit the heel of one fist while the other pounded the outside of his thigh. Even so, he could not completely stifle the sounds he made—but he did a creditable job. No one more than three meters away could have heard him laughing.

  The smothered laughter was some time in passing. When he had his breath back, Norman sat up against the maple and tried to light a cigarette, but the giggles kept returning and it took him three matches. He smoked it down, then leaned back against the tree with his hands laced behind his head, and waited.

  Presently the door of Bert’s house opened and alcohol light spilled out. A girl no older than fifteen emerged, wearing jeans and a garment more collar than coat. “Go on now,” Bert’s voice came after her. “Your mudder be mad if you late on a school night.”

  “Screw her,” the girl said boldly.

  “Not in twenny years, more’s de pity.”

  She laughed, blew him a kiss, and left. Norman watched her disappear into the forest, shaking his head and grinning.

  Bert was still alive, all right.

  In 1755 the British kicked the French the hell out of Nova Scotia. The few Acadians who survived and stayed were herded together on the French Shore, a godforsaken stretch of the Fundy coast between Yarmouth and Digby, some fifty to a hundred and fifty klicks west of Bert’s Ridge. The region is one of the proudest and most fiercely self-sufficient in the world. Norman had only driven through the French Shore—few Anglophiles are at home there—and so Bert was the only Acadian he had ever met. Nothing could make the old man divulge the reason he had left the French Shore so long ago.

  But once in a while Norman believed he could guess.

  When he was sure the girl was beyond earshot, Norman stood and called out Bert’s name, then approached the house slowly. Bert came to the door at once. Mountain folk do not greet each other with “Hello,” or “Hi, how are you?” The preferred greeting is an insulting commentary on whatever the greetee happens to be doing.

  “Don’t you ever poke yourself, Bert?”

  Bert showed no surprise at finding Norman at his door, betrayed his pleasure only by the faintest of smiles. “How you mean?”

  “Getting the diapers back on ’em afterwards.”

  The smile widened. “By de Jesus, dat’s true. Worth it, dough. Come on in and set.”

  Norman came in, took off his boots, and sat. There was a small but elegant tea ritual, involving both kinds of tea (Bert grew his own marijuana), and a sharing of the Cointreau that Norman had fetched in his pack. The next step then would have been a swapping of lies, regarding what had happened to each of them since their last meeting. But Bert broke tradition.

  “You got troubles, man?”

  Norman took a deep breath. “Yes, Bert. I do.”

  “Taught so, by Jesus.”

  Norman sipped Cointreau before speaking again. “No reason to burden you with them. But I need your help.”

  “Yah?”

  “Phinney’s Cove, Bert. Two men and a woman, a few months ago. She was probably quite ill. Uh…woods around the house—and a stream hard by, that isn’t fit to drink. At least one of the men is there now: Jacques LeBlanc. Pas Acadien. A Swiss. The only way I have of locating them is to ask Wayne down to the Hampton post office—and I mustn’t let him, or anyone, so much as know I’m in the area.”

  Bert nodded. “Shoor. You supposed to be dead.”

  Norman stared. Bert had no radio, no TV, and the only newspapers he ever saw were donated firestarter, months old. Norman’s “death” had taken place less than twenty-four hours before. The old man was uncanny.

  “If anyone can help me, you can, Bert.”

  “Shoor. De old DeMarco place. Just past Lester and Beth’s, hard by de fisherman’s markers, you know? One man dere now, maybe de woman too, I dunno. Big place, used to be painted red, dere’s a wreck out back used to be a goat shed. You want to sneak up on dem, you go through Lester’s woodlot to de bog, den go right downhill when you reach de bust-up tractor. Watch out for a ’lectric fence.”

  A wave of relief spread over Norman. “Bert, you’re a godsend.”

  “Some say. What else?”

  “I want your outlaw gun, the one that isn’t registered. And all the dynamite you can spare. A meal—I’ve been on the road since sunup—and a place to crash, I guess.” Bert nodded imperturbably at each request. “Down by the road, by the little stream, there’s a stand of white birch with my mark about a meter above eye level. You remember my mark?”

  “I know de birches.”

  “Right. There’s a suitcase buried there, combination lock. You remember my birthday?”

  “Shoor. First of January—you never had a birthday party in your life. Forget de year, dough.”

  “Sixty-five. Dial the numbers and take whatever you think is fair for the gun and dynamite. Stash the rest, I may need it fast.”

  Bert nodded. “You look at the Bay before you come up?”

  Norman’s heart sank. “Oh, hell. Tell me.” Bert could glance at the Bay and, from its color alone (he claimed), give you a weather forecast for the next week, more accurate than satellite tracking.

  “In two hours hit begin to snow like a fucker. Snow mebbe two, tree days.”

  “Damn. Skip the crash, then, and I’ll need that gun and at least a little dynamite right away.”

  “Eat first. Straighten you head.”

  “I can’t, old frien
d. I have to scout now, before I’ll leave tracks. I may be back around dawn, I may not.”

  Bert frowned but did not argue. He got up from his ancient rocker and left the house, returning with an ancient but impeccably maintained M-1 and a satchel. “Dynamite, detonators, fuses, ammo for de gun. We ever get time for a proper drunk, you and me?”

  Norman hesitated, then answered honestly. “I don’t think so, Bert. I don’t expect to live through this.”

  Bert frowned again. “Like I taught. De lady, she be your sister, eh?”

  “I think so. I hope so.” He took the gun and satchel, got his pack, and headed for the door. “Thanks, Bert. Thanks more than I can say. I should have come here months ago.”

  “No,” Bert said surprisingly. “No, you wasn’t ready den. You ready now. You always was a good boy, Norman.”

  Norman found that his eyes stung. He reached the door and put his boots back on. “Hey, Bert,” he said as he straightened, “I always heard that as a man gets older, his interest in the ladies kind of diminishes. They say sooner or later it goes away altogether. You think there’s any truth in that?”

  “Aw, shoor,” Bert replied at once. “God’s troot, by de Jesus.” He relit his pipe full of homegrown. “You first notice it come on, oh…” He paused reflectively. “…oh, about ten minutes after dey lay you in de ground.”

  Norman laughed. “Thanks again, Bert.” He shouldered his gear and left at once.