Dark Benediction

by Walter Michael Miller

  Then one day he fainted on the ladder, and fell out of the tree.

  He wasn’t badly hurt, only bruised, but it ended his career as a time-ship pilot. Kenny was losing color and weight, and the lethargy was coming steadily over him. His fingertips were covered with tiny stab-marks from the constant blood counts, and the hollow of his arm was marked with transfusion needles. Mostly, he stayed inside.

  We haunted the research institutes, and the daily mail was full of answers to our flood of pleading inquiries—all kinds of answers.

  “We regret to inform you that recent studies have been…”

  “Investigations concerning the psychogenic factors show only…”

  “Prepare to meet God…”

  “For seventy-five dollars, Guru Tahaj Reshvi guarantees…”

  “Sickness is only an illusion. Have faith and…”

  “We cannot promise anything in the near future, but the Institute is rapidly finding new directions for…”

  “Allow us to extend sympathy…”

  “The powers of hydromagnetic massage therapy have been established by…”

  And so it went. We talked to crackpots, confidence men, respectable scientists, fanatics, lunatics, and a few honest fools. Occasionally we tried some harmless technique, with Jules’ approval, mostly because it felt like we were doing something. But the techniques did more good for Cleo than they did for Kenny, and Kenny’s very gradual change for the worse made it apparent that nothing short of the miraculous could save him.

  And then Kenny started working on it himself.

  The idea, whatever it was, must have hit him suddenly, and it was strange—because it came at a time when both Cleo and I thought that he had completely and fatalistically accepted the coming of the end.

  “The labs aren’t going to find it in time,” he said. “I’ve been reading what they say. I know it’s no good, Dad.” He cried some then; it was good that he had relearned to cry.

  But the next day, his spirits soared mysteriously to a new high, and he went around the house singing to himself. He was busy with his stamp collection most of the time, but he also wandered about the house and garage searching for odds and ends, his actions seeming purposeful and determined. He moved slowly, and stopped to rest frequently, but he displayed more energy than we had seen for weeks, and even Jules commented on how bright he was looking, when he came for Kenny’s daily blood sample. Cleo decided that complete resignation had brought cheerfulness with it, and that acceptance of ill-fate obviated the need to worry or hope. But I wasn’t so sure.

  “What’ve you been up to, Kenny?” I asked.

  He looked innocent and shook his bead.

  “Come on, now. You don’t go wandering around muttering to yourself unless you’re cooking something up. What is it, another time-ship? I heard you hammering in the garage before dinner.”

  “I was just knocking the lid off an old breadbox.”

  I couldn’t get any answer but evasions, innocent glances, and mysterious smirks. I let him keep his secret, thinking that his enthusiasm for whatever it was he was doing would soon wear off.

  Then the photographers came.

  “We want to take a picture of Kenny’s treehouse,” they explained.

  “Why?—and how did you know he had one?” I demanded.

  It developed that somebody was doing a feature-article on the effects of science-fantasy television shows on children. It developed that the “somebody” was being hired by a publicity agency which was being hired by the advertisers who presented Captain Chronos and the Guardsmen of Time. It developed that Kenny’s fan letter, with the snapshot of his treehouse time-ship, had been forwarded to the publicity department by the producer of the show. They wanted a picture of the time-ship with Kenny inside, looking out through the fish bowl canopy.

  “It’s impossible,” I told them.

  They showed me a dozen pictures of moppets with LTR-guns, moppets in time-warp suits, moppets wearing Captain Chronos costumes, moppets falling free in space, and moppets playing Time-Pirate in the park.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s impossible,” I insisted.

  “We’ll be glad to pay something for it, if…”

  “The kid’s sick, if you must know,” I snapped. “He can’t do it, and that’s that, so forget about it.”

  “Maybe when he’s feeling better…?”

  “He won’t be feeling better,” Cleo interrupted, voice tense, with a catch in it. “Now please leave!”

  They left, with Cleo herding them out onto the porch. I heard them apologizing, and Cleo softened, and began to explain. That was a mistake.

  A week later, while we were still drinking our coffee at the dinner table, the doorbell rang. Cleo, expecting an answer to her recent wire to some South American clinic, left the table, went to answer it, and promptly screamed.

  I dropped my cup with a crash and ran to the living room with a butcher knife, then stopped dead still.

  It stood there in the doorway with a stunned expression on its face, gaping at Cleo who had collapsed in a chair. It wore a silver uniform with jack-boots, black-and-red cape, and a weird helmet with antenna protruding from it. It had a lantern jaw and a big, meaty, benign contenance.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” it boomed in a gentle deep-rich voice. “We just drove over from the studio, and I didn’t take time to change…”

  “Ulk!” said Cleo.

  I heard footsteps at the head of the stairs behind me, then a howl from Kenny who had been getting ready for bed, after being helped upstairs.

  “Captain Chronos!”

  Bare feet machine-gunned down the stairs and came to a stop at a respectful distance from the idol.

  “GgaaaaAAAWWWSSSShhhh!” Kenny timidly walked half-way around him, looking him up and down. “Geee… Gaaawwssshh!”

  Cleo fanned herself with a newspaper and recovered slowly. I tossed the butcher-knife on a magazine stand and mumbled something apologetic. There were two of them: Chronos and the producer, a small suave man in a business suit. The latter drew me aside to explain. It developed that the photographers had explained to the boss, who had explained to the client, who had mentioned it to the agency, who had returned the fan letter to the producer with a note. It would appear that Captain Chronos, for the sake of nutritious and delicious Fluffy Crunkles, made it his habit to comfort the afflicted, the crippled, and the dying, if it were convenient and seemed somehow advantageous. He also visited the children’s wards of hospitals, it seemed.

  “This on the level, or for publicity?”

  “On the level.”

  “Where’s the photographer?”

  The producer reddened and muttered noncommittally. I went to the door and looked out through the screen. There was another man in their car. When I pushed the screen open, it hit something hard—a tape recorder. I turned:

  “Get out.”

  “But Mr. Westmore….”

  “Get out.”

  They left quickly. Kenny was furious, and he kept on being furious all through the following day. At me. Cleo began agreeing with him to some extent, and I felt like a heel.

  “You want Kenny to get the full treatment?” I grumbled. “You want him to wind up a sob-story child?”

  “Certainly not, but it was cruel, Rod. The boy never had a happier moment until you…”

  “All right, so I’m a bastard. I’m sorry.”

  That night Abe Sanders (Captain Chronos) came back alone, in slacks and a sport shirt, and muttering apologies. It developed that the Wednesday evening shows always had a children’s panel (Junior Guardsmen) program, and that while they understood that Kenny couldn’t come, they had wanted to have him with the panel, in absentia, by telephone.

  “Please, Dad, can’t I?”

  The answer had to be no… but Kenny had been glaring at me furiously all day, and it was a way to make him stop hating me… still, the answer had to be no… the publicity… but he’d be delighted, and he could stop hating my gu
ts for kicking them out.

  “I guess so, if the offer’s still open.”

  “Dad!”

  The offer was still open. Kenny was to be on the show. They rehearsed him a little, and let him practice with the tape recorder until he got used to his voice.

  On Wednesday evening, Kenny sat in the hall doorway to the living room, telephone in his lap, and stared across at Sanders’ face on the television screen. Sanders held another phone, and we beard both their voices from the set. Occasionally the camera dollied in to a close shot of Sanders’ chuckle, or panned along the table to show the juvenile panel members, kids between eight and sixteen. There was an empty chair on Sanders’ right, and it bore a placard. The placard said “KENNY WESTMORE.”

  It lasted maybe a minute. Sanders promised not to mention Kenny’s address, nor to mention the nature of his illness. He did neither, but the tone of conversation made it clear that Kenny was in bad shape and probably not long for this world. Kenny had stage fright, his voice trembled, and he blurted something about the search for a cure. Cleo stared at the boy instead of the set, and my own glance darted back and forth. The cameraman panned to the empty chair and dollied in slowly so that the placard came to fill the screen while Kenny spoke. Kenny talked about stamp collections and time machines and autographs, while an invisible audience gaped at pathos.

  “If anybody’s got stamps to trade, just let me know,” he said. “And autographs…”

  I winced, but Sanders cut in. “Well, Kenny—we’re not supposed to mention your address, but if any of you Guardsmen out there want to help Kenny out with his stamp collection, you can write to me, and I’ll definitely see that he gets the letters.”

  “And autographs too,” Kenny added.

  When it was over, Kenny had lived… but lived.

  And then the mail came in a deluge, forwarded from the network’s studio. Bushels of stamps, dozens of autograph books, Bibles, money, advice, crank letters, and maudlin gushes of sugary sympathy… and a few sensible and friendly letters. Kenny was delighted.

  “Gee, Dad, I’ll never get all the stamps sorted out. And look!—an autograph of Calvin Coolidge!…”

  But it never turned him aside from his path of confident but mysterious purpose. He spent even more time in his room, in the garage, and—when he could muster the energy—back in the maple woods, doing mysterious things alone.

  “Have they found a cure yet, Dad?” he asked me pleasantly when an expected letter came.

  “They’re… making progress,” I answered lamely.

  He shrugged. “They will… eventually.” Unconcerned.

  It occurred to me that some sort of psychic change, unfathomable, might have happened within him—some sudden sense of timelessness, of identity with the race. Something that would let him die calmly as long as be knew there’d be a cure someday. It seemed too much to expect of a child, but I mentioned the notion to Jules when I saw him again.

  “Could be,” be admitted. “It might fit in with this secrecy business.”

  “How’s that?”

  “People who know they’re dying often behave that way. Little secret activities that don’t become apparent until after they’re gone. Set up causes that won’t have effects until afterwards. Immortality cravings. You want to have posthumous influence, to live after you. A suicide note is one perversion of it. The suicide figures the world will posthumously feel guilty, if he tells it off.”

  “And Kenny…?!”

  “I don’t know, Rod. The craving for immortality is basically procreative, I think. You have children, and train them, and see your own mirrored patterns live on in them, and feel satisfied, when your time comes. Or else you sublimate it, and do the same thing for all humanity—through art, or science. I’ve seen a lot of death, Rod, and I believe there’s more than just-plain-selfishness to people’s immortality-wishes; it’s associated with the human reproductive syndrome—which includes the passing on of culture to the young. But Kenny’s just a kid. I don’t know.”

  Despite Kenny’s increasing helplessness and weakness, he began spending more time wandering out in the woods. Cleo chided him for it, and tried to limit his excursions. She drove him to town on alternate days for a transfusion and shots, and she tried to keep him in the house most of the time, but he needed sun and air and exercise; and it was impossible to keep him on the lawn. Whatever he was doing, it was a shadowy secretive business. It involved spades and garden tools and packages, with late excursions into the maples toward the creek.

  “You’ll know in four or five months,” he told me, in answer to a question. “Don’t ask me now. You’d laugh.”

  But it became apparent that he wouldn’t last that long. The rate of transfusions doubled, and on his bad days, he was unable to get out of bed. He fainted down by the creek, and had to he carried back to the house. Cleo forbade him to go outside alone without Jules’ day-to-day approval, and Jules was beginning to be doubtful about the boy’s activities.

  When restricted, Kenny became frantic. “I’ve got to go outside, Dad, please! I can’t finish it if I don’t. I’ve got to! How else can I make contact with them?”

  “Contact? With whom?”

  But he clammed up and refused to discuss anything about the matter. That night I awoke at two a.m. Something had made a sound. I stole out of bed without disturbing Cleo and went to prowl about the house. A glance down the stairway told me that no lights burned on the first floor. I went to Kenny’s room and gingerly opened the door. Blackness.

  “Kenny—?”

  No sound of breathing in the room. Quietly I struck a match.

  The bed was empty.

  “Kenny!” I bellowed it down the hall, and then I heard sounds—Cleo stirring to wakefulness and groping for clothes in our bedroom. I trotted downstairs and turned on lights as I charged from room to room.

  He was not in the house. I found the back screen unlatched and went out to play a flashlight slowly over the backyard. There… by the hedge… caught in the cone of light… Kenny, crumpled over a garden spade.

  Upstairs, Cleo screamed through the back window. I ran out to gather him up in my arms. Skin clammy, breathing shallow, pulse irregular—he muttered peculiarly as I carried him back to the house.

  “Glad you found it… knew you’d find it… got me to the right time… when are we…?”

  I got him inside and up to his room. When I laid him on the bed, a crudely drawn map, like a treasure map with an “X” and a set of bearings, fell from his pocket. I paused a moment to study it. The “X” was down by the fork in the creek. What had been buried there?

  I heard Cleo coming up the stairs with a glass of hot milk, and I returned the map to Kenny’s pocket and went to call the doctor.

  When Kenny awoke, he looked around the room very carefully—and seemed disappointed by what he saw. “Expecting to wake up somewhere else?” I asked.

  “I guess it was a dream,” he mumbled. “I thought they came early.”

  “Who came early?”

  But he clammed up again. “You’ll find out in about four months,” was all he’d say.

  He wouldn’t last that long. The next day, Doc Jules ordered him to stay inside, preferably sitting or lying down most of the time. We were to carry him outside once a day for a little sun, but he had to sit in a lawn chair and not run around. Transfusions became more frequent, and finally there was talk of moving him to the hospital.

  “I won’t go to the hospital.”

  “You’ll have to, Kenny. I’m sorry.”

  That night, Kenny slipped outside again. He had been lying quietly all day, sleeping most of the time, as if saving up energy for a last spurt.

  Shortly after midnight, I awoke to hear him tiptoe down the hall. I let him get downstairs and into the kitchen before I stole out of bed and went to the head of the stairs. “Kenny!” I shouted. “Come back up here! Right now!” There was a brief silence. Then he bolted. The screen door slammed, and bare feet trotted down the
back steps. “Kenny!”

  I darted to the rear window, overlooking the backyard. “Kenny!”

  Brush whipped as he dove through the hedge. Cleo came to the window beside me, and began calling after him.

  Swearing softly, I tugged my trousers over my pajamas, slipped into shoes, and hurried downstairs to give chase. But he had taken my flashlight.

  Outside, beneath a dim, cloud-threatened moon, I stood at the hedge, staring out across the meadow toward the woods. The night was full of crickets and rustlings in the grass. I saw no sign of him.

  “Kenny!”

  He answered me faintly from the distance. “Don’t try to follow me, Dad. I’m going where they can cure me.”

  I vaulted the fence and trotted across the meadow toward the woods. At the stone fence, I paused to listen—but there were only crickets. Maybe he’d seen me coming in the moonlight, and had headed back toward the creek.

  The brush was thick in places, and without a light, it was hard to find the paths. I tried watching for the gleam of the flashlight through the trees, but saw nothing. He was keeping its use to a minimum. After ten minutes of wandering, I found myself back at the fence, having taken a wrong turning somewhere. I heard Cleo calling me from the house.

  “Go call the police! They’ll help find him!” I shouted to her.

  Then I went to resume the search. Remembering the snap, and the “X” by the fork in the creek, I trotted along the edge of the pasture next to the woods until I came to a dry wash that I knew led back to the creek. It was the long way around, but it was easy to follow the wash; and after a few minutes I stumbled onto the bank of the narrow stream. Then I waded upstream toward the fork. After twenty yards, I saw the flashlight’s gleam and heard the crunch of the shovel in moist ground. I moved as quietly as I could. The crunching stopped.