by Patrick Ness
I welcome all challengers to my candidacy. I am confident that what I have to offer is what the citizens of Hennington want in a new leader. However, even if I end up running unopposed by legitimate competition, I do not expect a coronation. I am a leader, not a King. I will work harder than I ever have in my life to bring Hennington to a permanent place in the sun. And I hope you’ll work right alongside of me.
It is the right place. It is the right time. And I, Thomas Banyon, am the right man. Thank you very much. No questions.
61. Ambushed.
The phone calls were quick to manifest.
—Where the hell did that come from?
—Don’t ask me, I’m only his father. He hasn’t told me his plans since he was eleven.
—You don’t think he’s serious?
—He wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t serious. Thomas isn’t exactly known for his sense of humor.
—The impossible bastard.
—'Bastard’ might not be the best pejorative in this circumstance, Cora.
—Sorry, Archie. Can he possibly stand a chance, do you think?
—Running unopposed? Trust me, he’s got enough friends and terrified underlings to beat ‘None of the above'.
—Shit. I mean, just shit fuck shit, if you’ll pardon me. What’s he thinking? I mean, it’s obvious what he’s thinking, but I thought the book on Thomas was that he was happy in his Hennington Hills cave.
—Maybe he’s outgrown it. And it’s not a cave. He’s turned it into quite an enterprise.
—Don’t turn disingenuous on me, Archie. He’s an untouchable there. The police won’t arrest him and the courts won’t prosecute him. There’s no paper trail of any kind and no one’s talking. I don’t like it, but I can’t change it. I’ve just had to live with it, and it was mostly fine as long as he kept to himself. We’ve managed to spend twenty years avoiding each other’s toes, and now, out of nowhere, this, a disaster of epic proportions.
—It’s hardly that—
—But aren’t you as appalled … of course not, he’s your son.
—Yes.
—So what do you think?
—I think he’d be a highly functioning, thoroughly efficient, completely amoral Mayor. I think Hennington would run like clockwork but would be corrupt at its core. It might survive a Thomas tenure, but it would end up as something altogether more ghastly and unpleasant.
—So you’re with me that we have to do something?
—I’m not sure I’d go that far. I wasn’t the best father to him. If this is what he wants to do, I’d feel like a fink standing in his way.
—But surely for the sake of the city—
—He’s flesh and blood, Cora. He’s never gone out of his way to hurt me. On the contrary, Hennington Hills has a profit margin unparalleled in Banyon Enterprises, and I’m assuming that’s after he’s fixed the books. He didn’t buy that mansion with his salary. It may be for the good of the city, but who would I be if I crushed my own son?
—I’m not talking about crushing, Archie—
—He’s made too public an announcement to step down without an all-out battle. He’s far too tenacious and bloody-minded.
—Are you saying you can’t help me?
—I don’t know what I’m saying. Luther’s not speaking to me, and I’ve no idea where he is. If I step in front of Thomas, where does that leave me? I’m old. Do I really want thwarting my only biological son to be my last action as a man? Who am I if I do that? He’d be an absolute disaster as Mayor. I think Hennington would become a fairly frightening place to live—
—But?
—But I’ll be dead soon.
—Not that soon.
—Do you really think I’ve got another five years in me?
—Yes, I—
—I’m eighty-eight, Cora. Can you see me at ninety-three?
—You don’t expect me to believe you’ll give up on the entire future of our city just because you won’t be around to see it?
—It might not be that bad.
—You just said yourself—
—I know what I just said, but maybe it won’t. Maybe he’s got better motives. Maybe it’s a new leaf. How do we know? No one’s even talked to him yet.
—Archie, with all due respect, you’re whistling past the graveyard. You know how highly I think of you. You know how long I’ve respected you. Don’t take this the wrong way, old friend, but I also know that you’re a shrewd businessman. Do you honestly believe that if you were Mayor, you’d be able to practice enough restraint to keep all ten fingers out of the cookie jar? Do you honestly think that you’d be able to keep from utilizing some of the hidden, less-than-ethical perks of office? There’s no disrespect intended here at all, Archie, but if you couldn’t—
—I should tan your hide, but I see your point.
—Exactly. My private line’s ringing. It’s got to be Albert.
—He probably just heard. Go on, go talk to him. Jules just walked in anyway looking like someone ran over his puppy.
—I’ll try to understand the quandary you’re in, Archie, but please think it through. Your help would be invaluable.
—I’ll give it my best.
—Thank you. Call me soon. Albert?
—Armageddon has arrived, and it’s wearing a pinstripe suit, of all things.
—I know. I just got off the phone with Archie.
—Any insight?
—None, and I’m not even sure he would help us defeat Thomas.
—Why not? I thought they never got along.
—Not getting along is different to destroying your son’s ambition. Plus, this whole schism with Luther’s got him completely befuddled.
—Kind of late to become paternal. Can he at least help us with Jon Noth?
—What’s Jon Noth got to do with it?
—So you didn’t actually see the press conference?
—I was just pulling into the office. I heard most of it over the radio while sitting in the parking garage. I called Archie as soon as I got upstairs.
—You didn’t call me first?
—Not now, Albert, the world’s coming to pieces. What about Jon?
—He was standing off to the right when Thomas gave his little announcement. They left together at the end.
—I … He … Holy shit.
—It sort of makes sense in a screwed-up kind of way.
—I don’t believe it.
—I believe he’d do such a thing, I just never would have believed he’d pick Thomas Banyon, the least palatable candidate in the city.
—Where the hell did they even meet?
—I’d like to have been a fly on that wall.
—You don’t think—
—That somehow this is to get back at you? Only the scale of the endeavor makes it questionable.
—He’s odd, but he’s never been out-and-out crazy. Or malicious.
—You’re forgetting the duel.
—He was a college student then, full of stupid overwhelming passions. But how can he still, after all this time … I don’t believe it. He’s up to something.
—Obviously.
—No, more than that. This is a ploy. Maybe he has gone off the deep end, but there’s something more going on.
—An alliance with Thomas Banyon to take over the city?
—Like you said, it’s only a question of scale.
—But why? I love you heart and soul, petal, but do you really think he’d go to these extraordinary lengths just to spite you? Although, having said that—
—I don’t know, Albert. This is unbelievable. There’s more here than we know. Was there anyone else at the press conference?
—Just Thomas, Jon, and a bunch of Hennington Hills flunkies from what I could tell. A distinct lack of VIPS. No one who might have even hinted at an endorsement.
—Which would suggest that it was thrown together quickly.
—It would seem. You’d think he would have had someone there to give
him credibility, having none on his own. The man’s a criminal.
—That doesn’t mean he won’t get elected.
—Some dirty laundry will have to come out in the campaign. It could all get very, very uncomfortable for him.
—It can’t if he’s running unopposed.
—Somebody will run, especially now. We can’t be the only ones who know what a bad idea Mayor Banyon would be. What about Max?
—He’s out of the race.
—Maybe he’ll change his mind due to altered circumstances.
—This might make him want to stay out even more. Can you imagine running against Thomas Banyon?
—I hope you’re not imagining it.
—My God, what if it came to that?
—It won’t. We’ll think of something.
—I’m going to call him.
—Thomas Banyon?
—Jon.
—Do you think he’ll talk to you?
—Yes. If this is all some plot to get my attention, well, then he’s got it.
—Be careful.
—He can’t hurt me over the phone.
—You know what I mean.
—What’s he up to? Why has the world suddenly gone crazy?
62. Maggerty in Purgatory.
The room heaved with an angry whiteness, even when he closed his eyes. He struggled against the fever, stopping only when the pain in his chest and head were too much. One hand was bound to the railing of the bed, the other in an arm-shaped box that he couldn’t move away from his body. Every few minutes, he forgot and tried to touch his wound for comfort, failing every time. Whenever the pain and the fever cleared, he would suddenly panic because he was in an all-white room, tied to a bed, with the herd nowhere in sight. Then he would disappear again into the angry whiteness, only to reawaken in the same room, beginning the process once more.
Maggerty had no idea how much time had passed, was passing. Often, he couldn’t even tell what was real and what was a nightmare. Once, a white angel with a red face had forced knife after knife into his arm, draining all the blood from him. He had fought as hard as he could, but the room reared up and joined in. The nightmare swirled on in a twisting white-and-red spiral until he awoke again. The room had stopped moving, but there was a knife in his arm attached to a tube. The angel had won.
She caught herself looking for him.
After she struck him, the herd had moved away again, but it was soon apparent something was off. Each herdmember kept looking around in pensive turns, and few of them slept that night. Suddenly, it all seemed too quiet, too still. No thin-creature calls, no thin-creature smells. There was a small feeling of relief, but it was overtaken by a faint feeling of the world gone askew.
They missed him. So did she.
He had vanished once, years before, only to return a short time later, but this time was different. She had expelled him herself. She had been justified, but still. The next day, she had led them back to the place where it had happened. How would she treat him if she saw him? How would he react? He had proven himself a danger to the herd, a fact that was unacceptable. Expulsion had been the unambiguous and clear option. Yet somehow, the herd didn’t feel quite right without him. He was small. He couldn’t possibly prove more than a nuisance, none of the thin creatures could. Maybe he had learned his lesson. Years of calm shouldn’t be thrown out because of one negative action. He would be welcomed back, chastened, injured maybe, but still welcome.
He wasn’t there. The spot was empty. Only a faint remnant of his smell remained. She followed a brief trail of it, but it soon vanished altogether, as if into thin air. The herd shuffled behind her. It was a long while before they moved on again.
(—It’s going to take awhile for it to get completely through his system, but we’re pleased with the results so far.
—So he’s responding?
—In fits and starts but with observable progress, which is more than can be said for the gash on his torso.
—Still not healing?
—We’ve cut away a remarkable amount of dead tissue and the stitches are holding, but there’s no real clotting. It’s bizarre.
—Any ideas?
—I’d like to try him on the steroid-antibio combination we talked about.
—May as well give it a try. Nothing else seems to work. Shame he can’t tell us what it feels like.
—Story of his life, I’m guessing.)
On and on the limbo went until the most startling feeling of all. It took him a moment to realize what had happened. He was awake. And he knew it. He was sure of it. He knew it the whole day long. When the white angel with the red face came to him, he recognized that the angel was cleaning him. When he was tired, he took a nap and woke up again in the same white room where the same angel with the same red face was gently changing the tube in his arm.
He knew.
And then for a time he didn’t know. The room bent towards him, the walls curving, the ceiling bending down. He curled up as best he could against the restraints, wrenching his eyes shut to prevent the room from getting inside him, but it didn’t work. The white insinuated its way underneath his eyelids, forcing them back, forcing him to see see see. But then the angel returned and changed the tube in his arm again. Before long, everything was clear once more. He wasn’t even concerned about the herd. He wanted to get back to them, there was no question of that, but for now it was all right to be here, under the care – for care was what it must have been – of the angel who could make the white step back to where it couldn’t touch him.
He dreamed. And he was conscious of the dream. He was a boy again on the great farms to Hennington’s south. It was the barely-remembered time before the goat, before the wound, before his life became whatever it had become. A trail engulfed in cherry trees rooted its way through a grove that sat like an island among the plowed fields. Maggerty’s father was buried there beneath an already decaying stone tablet. The trail twisted around the grave without ever quite reaching it, and for many years, Maggerty hadn’t even known it was there. All he knew was that his father had just disappeared one day. In the dream, though, the trail changed its geography, and the grave became its terminus, a grassy circle bathed in sunlight even though this was where the grove was at its thickest. Maggerty sat there on the gravesite, eating fat, luscious cherries by the fistful. He was alone, and the silence, save for the sound of smacking cherry consumption, was both comforting and complete. A rustling sound started to float in faintly from all sides. Maggerty smiled to himself. They were coming. The rustling grew louder. Maggerty dropped the cherries he was holding and clapped his hands together. He heard twigs breaking and the sounds of bodies pushing their way through tightly packed trees. He could hear breathing, snorts, grunts, a call or two as one of them became momentarily stuck. The ground began to tremble in an awesome low rumble. Maggerty turned to one side and then the other as he caught sight of something moving, of branches bending, of trees swaying. He saw shadows moving around the circle of the grave, tantalizingly out of reach beyond the border of trees. He leaned his head back and yelled a call of welcome. Come, come, come to me, here I am, come to me, I’m ready.
Maggerty opened his eyes. He recognized the room again. He felt the soft whiteness of the sheets. He saw the angel’s back as it left, surely after providing care for him, just him. He was mending. He was healing. It felt like the right idea. He would be back with the herd soon. That was what the dream meant. He would be there with them again. He would feel that feeling again. They would welcome him as one of their own again.
He had never felt happier in his life.
Which, as has already been observed, just couldn’t last.
63. The Reasons Why We Do Things.
—Mr Banyon? Your father is here.
—Tell him … tell him hold on for a second. Don’t tell him that. Tell him I need to wrap something up, and I’ll see him in just a quick moment, okay?
—Certainly, sir.
Archie
wouldn’t like to be kept waiting, but for one of the rare times in his life, Thomas Banyon was unnerved. He had expected a call from Archie about launching his Mayoral bid, had welcomed it, in fact, with a deep curiosity as to how his father would take it. Not well, that was for sure, what with his longstanding friendship with Cora Larsson, but there was a part of Thomas that knew Archie would be proud of his audacity. Grudging acceptance was an emotion Thomas liked to inspire in people. The call, however, had taken hours to come, and the Mayoral bid had been dealt with in one sentence.
—Thomas, I need to talk to you.
—I thought you might.
—No, the Mayor’s office, whatever, I don’t care. I need to talk to you about something else, something much more important.
—What?
—I can’t talk over the mobile phone. God knows who’s listening.
—How many times do I have to tell you? No one can hear—
—I can be over there in fifteen minutes. Do you have time to see me?
—Of course, I do, but what—
—Fifteen minutes.
The only real likelihood was a problem with Luther. Thomas had never really gotten to the bottom of the split between the two. Neither had anyone else, as far as he could tell. Maybe there were shady goings-on that Archie, no slouch at shady goings-on himself earlier in his business career, needed Thomas to look after. Which, frankly, was annoying. He resented being Archie’s clean-up man for the other side of the law, if that’s what it was about.
But there had been something else. For years, Archie had treated Thomas with a polite and distant deference. Thomas guessed it was out of guilt at the banishment to Hennington Hills and maybe hidden pride that Thomas had made something out of it anyway, despite the lack of expectation. They hadn’t talked much over the years, especially as Luther ascended, and perhaps they hadn’t even really liked one another, but there had been no violent break, no battle to establish position, just year after year of calmly going about their individual lives, doing their level best not to intersect except when absolutely necessary. So for Archie to call with such, what was the word, such need was extraordinary and had managed to shake Thomas to the extent that he needed a moment to compose himself before seeing his father. First rule of business, family or not, composure was king.
