Second Chance

by Chet Williamson

  Keith nodded. "All right," he said. "All right."

  It was the easiest thing in the world. What was difficult was making it look hard. Keith took the gun, stepped up onto the stage, and stood at Harrison's right side. The black man turned his head so that he looked at Keith. His eyes, so tough in the bar, even after he had been beaten, were soft now, like a doe's, yielding, pleading.

  "In the temple, if you please," said Goncourt, his voice shaking. "Toward the other side. We wouldn't want to get anyone messy."

  Keith cocked the gun, tried to look like a man trying hard to look firm, took a deep breath. Harrison winced at the sound of the hammer cocking, and shook his head at Keith, little sharp, quick shakes. Of course Keith felt sorry for him, wished he didn't have to pull the trigger. He would much rather have turned the pistol on Goncourt and blown a hole in the old man's withered stomach. But it had to be done. And what was one more life? Harrison had sealed his own fate when he walked into Red's that night.

  Keith raised the revolver to Harrison's right temple. The man stopped shaking his head, and instead pushed against the muzzle as though he could keep the bullet inside if he pushed hard enough. Keith pushed too, until Harrison faced the other men, his eyes squeezed shut with his futile effort to hold back the bullet.

  "Sorry," Keith whispered. "Nothing personal."

  If Keith had been able to hold the pistol even a short distance away, Harrison would have died far less bloodily. As it was, the contact of muzzle to flesh made the bullet enter raggedly, the muzzle blast charring the skin and hair. The exit wound was far worse, and sodden tissue splashed the floor eight feet on the other side of Keith.

  In the few seconds after the pistol's explosion, Keith realized that he was being too professional. The firmness he had cultivated over years of assassinations had come back now to allow him to tolerate the taking of human life, and he felt the steel in his eyes, the set of his lips, the rigidity of his face that permitted no quavering, no room for remorse or guilt or pity to make his features tremble and melt.

  But he had to let it tremble, had to show them that he was what he seemed to be—a scientist, unused to killing, a man to whom such slaughter was something new and terrible. So he dropped his mental shield enough for his hand to shake, his lip to quiver, enough for his gorge to rise at the ruined head, the debris on the floor, the droplets of red and gray that spattered his arm. He turned and retched, panted, took deep breaths with his eyes closed.

  The sound made him open them. It was the rain-like patter of polite applause, as though he had just made a speech that his audience had approved of, and they were discreetly showing their endorsement.

  "Well done, Mr. Sullivan," Goncourt said, when the applause died down. Keith looked at the old man and saw that his eyes were sparkling. "Quick and efficient. The same kind of efficiency I'm sure you'll put to good use here at Goncourt in our . . . special section. You're one of us now. You've drawn blood. You're a soldier in the army of Christ and white survival, and we welcome you."

  Goncourt held out his bony hand, and Keith shakily stepped off the stage and grasped it. The strength of the grip startled him for only as long as he could be startled. Then someone closed the curtain, someone else took his gun, and the others got out of their seats and came up to him, smiling, congratulating, welcoming.

  "I knew you had it in you," said Bob Hastings, pumping Keith's hand. "I been talkin' you up here ever since I found out you were in bioengineering. Goddam, I knew right off you were prime material." He slapped Keith on the shoulder. "What's the matter, pardner? You just joined the club! Look happy about it!"

  Keith put on a sickly smile. "I'm happy about it, Bob. I just didn't get up this morning expecting to bag me a nigger."

  Bob and the men who overheard laughed, and Keith joined in with a chuckle.

  "That's all right, son," said Goncourt. "There's nothing wrong with having a little respect for the sanctity of human life . . ." He gave the obligatory two beats before his punch line. "Even a jigaboo's." He laughed and the men laughed with him. "Now," he went on, "you go with Don and get all those forms filled out. Then you go home and get packed up. Come on back here when you're through, Bob here can give you the tour, and you can start your first tour of duty tomorrow."

  Beside the forms, there was a picture to be taken for a pass, but the process went quickly, and within an hour Keith was driving back to his apartment in Bone. He called Sally and told her he had gotten a job at Goncourt, and wouldn't be able to see her before he went in for his shift. She told him she was glad for him, and said she couldn't wait to see him when he got out, and he promised he would call her as soon as he did.

  Then he packed and returned to Goncourt Laboratories, carrying only several changes of clothes, his book of the mind, and universally deadly intent.

  Chapter 22

  July 18, 1993:

  This time the joke is on me. At least it seems that way from what I've seen here so far.

  I expected much more. It started out all right, what with the secret door and the execution/initiation scenario. But I had in mind the dreams of paranoid sci-fi fantasies, of great conspiracies backed by the great fortunes of great but misguided men. I envisioned a sprawling subterranean complex, like something out of Jules Verne. I saw a legion of scientist/ racist/scholars determined to wipe out every group that was dissimilar to their own. I saw the inventors of AIDS, gifted with the talent to create things far worse.

  That was the rumor, damn it, and I bought into it with all sincerity. It seems, however, that the best gift I could bring to the world from this place would be to blow up Goncourt Labs, along with everyone in it.

  They are indeed the kind of minds that have brought us to our current dilemma. Bigots. Shortsighted fools. The trashiest of white trash. The legitimate business does nearly seventeen million in sales a year, and nets Goncourt in the neighborhood of four million, most of which goes into the lab. They save even more money by—naturally—cutting corners on hazardous waste disposal. The typical small-plant-small-mind mentality, almost a cliché of itself. Unfortunately the cliché doesn't extend to the secret lab.

  There are more delusions of grandeur here than grandeur itself. I had pictured hundreds of scientists, but instead there are only thirty-five or so, and that includes those who work on the legitimate end. Ten are pure research, theorists, and the rest of us are technicians. The only thing that can be said for the place is that it is truly secret, sixty feet beneath the ground, and accessible only by two service elevators that require a special key to take you below. At least that much of my fantasy remains true.

  But what I've seen of it so far is pretty dull. The facility itself is off either side of a long hall. On the right is the living area, with sleep cubicles, cooking facilities (we do our own cooking, and it looks as though I'll be called upon to make my famous chili), and a rec room, with TV, a video library (Stallone, Eastwood, and Steven Seagal films are favorites), and a pool table, as well as a Nautilus and some other exercise equipment. The sleep rooms are private, but that's all that can be said for them. Room for a bed and a suitcase, and little more. Still, it was quiet, and I slept well last night.

  On the other side of the hall are the labs. There are five of them, small, spare rooms without any decoration. One of the rooms is used for pure research, lined with chalkboards and bookshelves, while ranks of computers occupy the floor space. Another is culture storage, while the remaining three are used for the lab work. That's what I'll be doing. Thank God they didn't throw me into the theoretical side of it. It would have exposed me right away. But I know enough to clone genes if somebody gives me genes to clone. Freeman will be setting up the experiments, and I'll be performing them along with Hastings. I have, however, been told that I may feel free to make any suggestions I want. That's hardly likely. There's also a large storage area where they also keep the experimental animals, but I haven't seen that yet.

  If what I'm looking for is really here, I'm going to be very,
very surprised.

  ~*~

  "You finished?" Bob Hastings asked, and Keith nodded. "Christ, Pete, I don't know how a little yogurt and a bran muffin can make a guy ready for the day." Hastings picked up what remained of his third slice of toast and wiped the egg yolk off his plate. He popped the sodden morsel into his mouth and chewed. "First thing this morning," he said with a full mouth, "I'll show you the storage area." He grinned, showing a gray clump of chewed toast stuck to an incisor. "And the lab rats. And then Freeman'll fill you in on what exactly the hell we're doing here."

  In a few minutes Keith and Hastings were standing outside a wide door next to the service elevator. "Storage. Some of the most amazing drugs in the world are in here," Hastings said with mock solemnity, then opened the door.

  "And it's not locked?"

  "What's to lock? Everybody here trusts each other. We're all on the same side, aren't we? Besides, we do inventory every so often. A few years back we found something missing, and then we found the guy who took it. Tried to make a little deal on his own, you know? Took him two weeks to die, and he screamed most of the time. Come on."

  Inside were row upon row of metal shelves on which sat containers. Some were liter sized, but most were smaller. The vast majority were in test tubes, each carefully labeled with numbers and code letters that meant nothing to Keith. "What is all this stuff?" he asked Hastings.

  "Most of it's government work. Along with the pharmaceuticals, a real profitable part of the business is putting together stuff for government."

  "I thought our government had its own people doing that."

  Hastings chuckled. "I didn't say our government, did I?"

  "That's pretty un-American, isn't it?" Keith frowned. "Supplying foreign governments with chemical weapons?"

  "Not weapons. More for intelligence use. Hypnotics, truth serum . . ." He picked up a vial from several labeled ZF723. "Now this little baby, for example, is a suggestibility drug. You nail somebody with a hypo full of this, just suggest that they do something, and if they've ever had a thought about doing it or anything like it, they will. Removes the inhibitions."

  "Dispenses with morality," said Keith.

  "Hmm. Never thought of it like that, but I guess it's as good a way to say it as any."

  "You formulate it here?"

  Hastings nodded. 'Ted Horst. About two years ago. Can hardly keep up with demand."

  "So who do you sell all these to?"

  "Little countries. Mostly Latin American and African, though we did cut a deal with the Serbs last year. We could care less if the niggers and the beaners use them to kill each other with, long as they're willing to pay for them. Hell, they're supporting the R&D that's ultimately going to wipe them off the face of the earth. Come on, let's see the animals."

  Hastings led the way between the shelves until they reached a large double door. "Wild Kingdom," he said, chuckling, and pushed it open.

  Keith followed him into a room filled with several dozen cages. Rabbits and rats were in many of them, and in the rest guinea pigs squealed and ran about in circles at the sudden disturbance. Some of the containers were made of glass with covered tops, and respirators made a sighing counterpoint to the rodent's cries.

  "Cute little buggers, aren't they?" Hastings said. "The ones in the glass we're using for airborne experiments."

  "Any simians?"

  "Simians. Hell, yes. Right over here. Now this we do keep locked," he said. "But not to keep us out. It's to keep them in. You got a key. It's the big silver one. Go ahead."

  Keith took the key ring from his pocket and unlocked the door. When he opened it, the sharp tang of urine and feces made him wince. There were four compartments in the room, all glassed, but they didn't contain animals. Instead Keith could make out human figures lying on cots in three of the four cells. They were naked. None of them moved, but he could see their eyes were open.

  "The Airborne Rangers, we call them. Gotta be isolated from us, otherwise who knows what we'd pick up?"

  "Jesus Christ," whispered Keith. "People . . ."

  "Yep. Human guinea pigs. It's a helluva lot more efficient when it gets past the rodent stage. There's another reason too. You have any idea how much research chimps are? At least fifty K each, and the price goes up every year. Frankly, we can't afford 'em. But these little beauties are absolutely free in nearly any city. Come on and meet the gang, even though they can't hear us to say howdy."

  Hastings pointed to the six inch wide tubes going into each cell. "Each one has its own ventilation system, filtered to the max. We go in to take blood and tissue samples, but we always wear sealed suits. Knock 'em out too, so they don't try anything funny. This one's Remus, least that's what we call him. His real name doesn't matter anymore."

  Keith looked through the glass at the black man lying on the cot. He didn't look back, but kept his eyes on the glass ceiling of his cell, blinking occasionally.

  "We'da kept Harrison if we didn't already have this guy. Now over here is Big Wang. You can see his name doesn't fit him real well."

  The cell across from the black man held an old oriental man whose penis, as Hastings had suggested, was just as shriveled as the rest of him. "Damn," said Keith. "How do you know this one isn't dying already? He looks ancient."

  "The older they are, the easier they are to catch." Hastings laughed, and Keith laughed a little too. "But don't worry about that. We can isolate the infection, no matter how old they are or what else is wrong with them. All they got to be able to do is breathe."

  Hastings stepped in front of the sealed door of the next cell. "Now here's as close to a looker as we ever get in here. White woman. Killed two birds with one stone on this bitch. Little old outside agitator snooping around, followed one of our trucks when it made its delivery to the river. One of the boys came up behind her in a car, saw her taking pictures of the dumping. She was all alone, so we had a new lab rat. Hard to get white ones, 'cause we feel too damn guilty. But this bitch was a different story. Check her out."

  He flipped a switch and the cell was flooded with light. The woman, naked as the men, pressed her eyelids shut and started to throw up a hand, but the effort was too great, and the arm fell back to her side, so that Keith was able to see her face. It took all the self-possession he had not to let the recognition show. Next came the urge to back away, so that she could not see him, but her lassitude allowed her no curiosity about who had disturbed her.

  "What's the matter with them? They all drugged?"

  "You bet. Keeps them nice and calm. Just slip a little into the ventilation system, and they're gentle as kittens. And speaking of pussies, pretty nice, huh? A little older than I like them, but not bad."

  Keith nodded, remembering warm New Orleans nights in the arms of the woman who now lay naked on the cot.

  "We all had a field day with her, I don't mind tellin' you. Popped her myself. Got a little rough, but she deserved it."

  He nodded again, thinking of her spirit, her sincerity, her naïve need to do something for the earth.

  "Made her squeal like one of those guinea pigs, boy."

  Keith kept nodding, seeing himself taking Bob Hastings's head and twisting it until he heard the neck crack.

  "Too bad you're too late for a piece, but she's isolated now. You'll just have to wait two weeks for Sally."

  Then Keith turned and smiled at Bob Hastings. "She's worth waiting for," Keith said. "Rather wait for her than screw some commie, nigger-loving, save-the-earth whore."

  Hastings's smile faded. "Uh . . . yeah. Okay then. Let's go see Freeman, right?"

  He turned and walked toward the door. Keith followed, but not before turning out the light in the woman's cell, so that it would no longer hurt her eyes.

  When he saw her victimized on the cot, he knew that he might actually have loved her when they had been lovers. What went through him was more than pity. That she should have been investigating Goncourt came as only a mild surprise. Eight years ago he had seen the
desire for more than activism in her, with her sympathy toward the more radical end of the environmental spectrum. And Texas was, after all, not that far from Louisiana. She had probably come west to wage some other ecological battle, heard rumors that Goncourt was dumping illegally, and decided, while she was in the area, to try and prove it.

  She went out alone, intending to return a hero, and she was caught. Caught by a band of rednecked bastards who resembled not so much Dr. Strangelove as Dr. Mengele.

  Naked people in glass cages? Gang rape? Racial experiments on human beings? Jesus. This was sick, neo-Nazi behavior all the way. Keith strongly suspected that these people weren't scientists, but sadists, using science as a mask behind which they could get their jollies abusing women and minorities. He had seen the look on Goncourt's face when he shot Harrison, and damned himself for doing it. It wasn't the killing that bothered him as much as it was the reason he had had to kill—to get some crippled old bigot off.

  It made him sick, especially when he thought of the hopes he had had for the lab and what he might find there. Still, he would give it a little time, wait and see if these inbred cretins might actually have stumbled on some of the things they had been credited with by the gunsmith. There were, after all, the behavioral drugs Hastings had just showed him. Keith was already thinking of ways he might be able to use the suggestibility drug he had been shown, so the effort wouldn't be totally in vain.

  Hastings led him into Freeman's office, a small, closet-like space created by walling off a corner of one of the labs. There was only one chair beside Freeman's, so Hastings excused himself and left. Freeman smiled at Keith as gingerly as if he felt his face might crack.

  "What do you think, Pete?"

  "Pretty impressive," Keith lied.

  "Not what you expected?"

  "Well, the . . . the cages were . . ." He let it trail off. "I didn't expect that."

  Freeman nodded soberly. "It's hard sometimes to accept that the ends justify the means, but we think they do. Otherwise we wouldn't be down here at all. We feel we have a very great mission, a great destiny. We hope that out of this humble laboratory will come the technology to save the white Christian world, Pete." He tried to smile again. "That sounds pretty high-falutin', but it's true. I know sometimes the boys get a little carried away."