Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51

by Humans (v1. 1)

  But in the intervals when he was awake, Kwan burned with a new kind of desire. He had gone through the despair, and out the other side. He still wanted to die, he still wanted to throw away this failed self, but now, somehow, somehow, he wanted the world to know. The governments, the bureaucrats, the uncaring, unnoticing people who made it possible; he wanted them all to know.

  Grigor also stayed mosdy in the living room, seated on the sofa where he’d slept, looking out at the empty suburban road once Maria Elena had opened the drapes. He and Maria Elena were supposed to leave by ten-thirty, to get him back to the hospital before lunch, but when she came to tell him it was time, he admitted, awkward and hesitant, that he didn’t want to go. ‘There’s nothing for me there,” he said, speaking sofdy because Kwan was asleep again across the room. “Not any more. There’s nothing they can do for me. I want to be... somewhere. Maria Elena? May I stay?”

  “I don’t think the hospital will let you,” she said carefully, sitting down beside him.

  “If you don’t want me—”

  “Grigor, of course I want you!”

  “It would only be for a few days.”

  He was trying so hard not to plead, to retain his dignity. She saw that and responded to it. “I could call the hospital, ask if it’s—”

  “No,” Grigor said. Slyness did not come naturally to him, the expression sat oddly on his face. “Maria Elena, they don’t know where you live. They don’t even know what state you live in.”

  “But if you just disappear, they’ll call the police, they’ll worry.. .”

  “Then let me telephone.”

  “Yes, that’s a good idea,” she said, thinking the doctors would talk sense into him. She wouldn’t at all mind having Grigor here, but what about his medicines? What about the entire hospital routine? Would he survive on his own, and for how long?

  “Let me do it in private,” he said. “There is a telephone in the kitchen?”

  “Yes.”

  He walked there, with some help from Maria Elena, who saw to it he was more or less secure on the tall stool near the wall phone before she left the room, pulling the swing door closed.

  In the front hall were Frank and Pami, getting ready to go out. At first, Maria Elena thought they intended to leave permanendy, and something very like panic touched her, making her arms shiver with nervousness. “Frank?” she said, her voice trembling. “Are you going away?”

  He grinned at her. “I’m not that easy to get rid of. Pami and me’re gonna go get some groceries. We kinda used everything up last night, didn’t we?”

  It was true. The unexpected addition of three new people, and Grigor as well, had left Maria Elena with very litde food in the house. “Oh, that’s fine,” she said, with a sudden rush of relief, knowing he didn’t after all mean to go away, at least not now, not yet. I’ll make a list,” she offered. “I’d go with you, but Grigor...”

  “No, that’s okay,” Frank told her, “we can handle it. And that’s good, you make a list. And tell us how to get to the store.”

  She did all that, and he kissed her goodbye without awkwardness in front of Pami, and they left. Maria Elena stood in the living room near the sleeping Kwan and watched out the window as Frank and Pami got into his Toyota and drove away.

  How extraordinary to have this house full of strangers all at once. To go from the loneliness of life with Jack—without Jack, really—to absolute solitude, and then all at once to this. In place of Jack’s aloof perfection, these imperfect people, sick, criminal, dying. But how much more alive to be among these dying than to be with Jack.

  I don’t ever want them to go away, she thought, though she knew that death would be taking some of them very soon, no matter what.

  Faintly she heard Grigor’s voice calling, and hurried out to the kitchen, half afraid he’d fallen, hurt himself, was in some sort of crisis she wouldn’t be able to handle. But he was still perched on the stool, leaning on the counter. He held out the phone, saying, “They want to talk to you. I told them I refuse to go back for at least a week.”

  As she was taking the phone, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered, “Don’t give them your address or phone number or anything.”

  “All right.” Into the phone she said, “Hello?”

  It was Dr. Fitch, one of the staff she’d gotten to know; an older man, calm and professional, with an orange and gray beard. He said, “Mrs. Auston?”

  “Yes, Dr. Fitch, hello.”

  “Are you a party to this, then?”

  “Well, I guess I am.”

  “Is Grigor right there?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “All right, then,” said his professional voice. “You needn’t say anything, I’ll talk. Except that we could keep him physically much more comfortable than you possibly can, Grigor’s right about the hospital not being able to do him any good any more. Mrs. Auston, there’s no particular reason why he isn’t dead already. He may last a week, he may last a month. If he stays with you, the likelihood is he’ll die with you. Will you be able to handle that?”

  “I think so,” she said, holding tight to the phone.

  “I want you to write down some phone numbers,” he said. “If you need help, any time, for anything, call.”

  “Thank you, I will.”

  She wrote down on the pad by the phone the telephone numbers he gave her, and the over-the-counter medicines that might be symptomatic help if Grigor began to break apart in this way or in that way. He then urged her to urge Grigor to rethink this idea, saying, “He might go as long as two days without serious difficulty, but certainly no longer. Very soon it will become extremely uncomfortable there for both of you.”

  “I understand.”

  Grigor sat smiling with closed lips as she finished her phone conversation, then said, “We will pretend you told me everything he said you should tell me.”

  “Good.”

  “This afternoon,” he said, “we will go for a ride. You will show me things.”

  “I’d like to,” Maria Elena said.

  “And if there’s a tomorrow,” he said, with that compressed little smile, “we will do something else.”

  * * *

  When Frank came back with groceries, he was bouncing and fidgety with some kind of excitement. Grigor was back in the living room by then, seated on the sofa, watching Maria Elena help Kwan down a small amount of broth. Frank appeared in the doorway holding full plastic bags in both hands. “Grigor,” he said. “When we get this stuff put away, I want to talk to you.”

  “I’ll stay right here,” Grigor promised.

  Frank and Pami put the groceries away, and then returned to the living room, where Kwan was still sitting up, trying to drink. Frank sat on the sofa beside Grigor. He kept snapping his fingers while he talked, apparendy unconsciously. He said, “Pami and I were talking in the car. Did I tell you about the five-million-dollar hit?”

  When Grigor said no, Frank told him—and Maria Elena and Kwan—the lady lawyer’s advice. “She didn’t know it, but she was right,” he said. “The only way I’m gonna get out from under my own history is with the one big solid hit, and then quit. I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out what that hit is, and now I got it.”

  Clearly, Grigor had no idea what Frank was talking about. Polite, nothing more, he said, “And it’s something you want to talk to me about?”

  “You bet it is. You really want to get into that nuclear plant, like you said last night? No fooling?”

  “No fooling,” Grigor said, sitting up, becoming more alert.

  “And you studied that stuff,” Frank pressed him. “How to run them and all that.”

  “I have read about them,” Grigor said. “No one person can run such a place, but I do know how it’s done. Some of the mathematics I wouldn’t be able to do, that’s all.”

  Kwan clapped his hands to get their attention, and when they looked at him he grinned weakly and pointed at himself. Frank said, “You’r
e a math guy?”

  Kwan nodded.

  “And you want to be in on this?”

  Kwan nodded, and waved an imaginary flag.

  Grigor translated: “For propaganda, like me.”

  “I don’t care what people’s reasons are,” Frank said, and asked Kwan, “You could definitely help Grigor, if he needed it?”

  Again Kwan nodded.

  Grigor said, “Frank, I don’t understand what your reasons are. You want to invade that plant?”

  “You bet,” Frank told him. “All I have to figure out is how to pick up the money.”

  “What money, Frank?”

  “The money they’ll pay us,” Frank said, “to give them back their nuclear power plant, undamaged. You do your joke, whatever you want, just so I can do my thing.”

  Pami, twisted mouth and scrawny voice, eyes full of leftover anger, said, “Frank and me, we gonna kidnap the plant.”

  “Hold it hostage,” Frank said. “For a five-mil ransom.”

  Maria Elena had been sitting near Kwan. Now she stood up, looking and sounding scared, saying, “Frank, are you sure? That’s so public, so dangerous. What if you’re caught?”

  “If I’m caught stealing a toothpick,” Frank told her, “I’m still in forever. What difference does it make? I can’t do anything that’s more dangerous or less dangerous.”

  Maria Elena, terrified of the whole idea, floundered for something to reply, and could only come up with, “What if they won’t pay?”

  ‘They’ll pay,” Frank said, with calm assurance. “Just to be sure we don’t accidentally hit the wrong switch. Or on purpose. This is the one, Maria, this is the only five—”

  The doorbell rang. Grigor clutched the sofa arm: “They agreed! They said I could stay!”

  Maria Elena left the living room, and the others sat silent, listening. They heard the door open, heard Maria Elena’s question, heard a heavy dark-timbred male voice say, “I’m looking for Pami Njoroge. Saw her at the shopping mall, wanted to say hello, missed her there. Saw the car out front here, didn’t want to leave town without I say hello to my old friend Pami.”

  He’d been approaching all through this speech, and now he appeared in the living room doorway: a big-boned, hard- looking black man with a cold smile and mean red-rimmed eyes. He glanced once, without interest, at the group in the room, then smiled more broadly and more meanly: “Hello, Pami.”

  They all saw the frightened look that came and went on Pami’s face. They all heard the fatalism in her voice: “Hello, Rush,” she said.

  Ananayel

  So Brother Rush is back.

  Well, no matter. The process is under way now; he can’t stop it. That strange quintet will get into Green Meadow III, I can count on Frank to make that happen. Each will go in for a different reason, but the reasons will unite them just long enough for my purposes.

  Once inside the plant, the five will make their demands, and the demands will not be met. It won’t be out of bravery or foolhardiness that officialdom will refuse to meet their conditions, but out of muddle and mess and ego and incompetence. Responsibility will be diluted among various private corporations, public and semi-public regulating authorities, even congressional committees. Those who are afraid to act will be counterbalanced by those who are afraid they will not get credit for whatever actions turn out to be successful. Publicity-hogging, buck-passing, all the common discourtesies of public life, will conspire to keep Frank from getting his money. And the usual spinelessness of the happy media will keep the various propaganda efforts from getting out of the plant and into the world’s consciousness.

  Gradually, but sooner rather than later, Frank and the others will begin to realize the enormity of what they’ve done and the hopelessness of their position.

  And then my task will be finished.

  33

  N o one knew exactly what to make of Pami’s “friend,” Brother Rush. Clearly, he wasn’t her friend at all, but she seemed to feel powerless to deny him. There was at all times something cold and sly and insinuating about him, but the menace never quite broke the surface, never entirely solidified into anything you could call him on.

  Frank felt the frustration of this the most, and took Pami aside to make her tell him what was going on: “What’s with this guy? He your pimp? What do we want him around for?”

  “I don’t want him around,” Pami said, “but Rush—he gets what he wants. But he won’t bother nobody.”

  “He bothers me.”

  At which point, Rush came strolling into the room and said, “Hey, what’s happnin,” and that was the end of that.

  That he would be staying for dinner was understood, somehow, though he never asked and no one invited him and in fact no one wanted him. But a sixth place was set at the table, Rush took his seat at the far side of Pami, and as the meal progressed he alternated between extravagant praise of what Maria Elena had accomplished in the kitchen and questions that confused them all.

  He was pumping them, that was clear, or at least he was trying to, but about what? His questions were hard to answer because they were full of assumptions that weren’t true. He said, “You just waitin here for somebody else gonna show up?”

  Frank said, “Like who?”

  “I dunno,” Rush told him, shrugging as though it didn’t matter, trying to make that mean secret face look casual and innocent. “Somebody to tell you what to do next, where y’all gonna go from here.”

  Grigor smiled at Rush with closed lips, and said, “No one tells us where to go. We know where we are going. Some of us do. We are absolutely free.”

  “You know where you’re going?” Rush looked interested. “Where’s that, Gregor?” (He couldn’t quite seem to get his mouth to twist the name all the way around to Grigor.)

  This time Grigor permitted his lips to open when he smiled. ccTo the grave, brother,” he said.

  Rush looked merely interested: “You got what Pami got?”

  “This,” Maria Elena said firmly, “is not a thing to talk about at dinner.”

  “You’re right, Maria,” Rush said. “I love this sauce. You got some special spices in here, don’tcha?”

  But soon he was at it again, saying, “Do you all have some special doctor you’re gonna go see?”

  Frank put down his fork. “Rush,” he said, letting the exasperation show, “do I look like I need a doctor?”

  “No, you don’t,” Rush agreed. “You truly don’t.” And he grew quiet again, if thoughtful.

  The next time he spoke, it was something new; neither irrelevant questions nor extravagant praise. Lifting his head, sniffing the air, almost like a cat, he said, “You got somebody hangin around outside. This the guy you been waitin on?”

  “Goddammit, Rush,” Frank said, “I don’t know what the hell is the matter with you, what Pami said to you or what—”

  “I didn’t say nothing to him!” Pami cried. “This is some idea all his own!”

  “Whatever it is,” Frank said. “Whatever gave you this wild hair up your ass, Brother Rush, let me tell you once and for all. We aren’t waiting for anybody We weren’t waiting for you—”

  “Absolutely,” Grigor said.

  “—and we aren’t waiting for anybody else.”

  Rush nodded through this, smiling gendy, and when Frank was finished he said, ccThen you won’t care if I go out and see to this fella outside.”

  “Be my guest,” Frank said. “If you think there’s somebody out there.”

  “Oh, somebody’s there all right,” Rush said.

  Maria Elena, looking toward the curtained windows, said, “But who?”

  “That’s what I’ll find out,” Rush told her, and got to his feet. “Satisfy all our curiosity.” Dropping his napkin beside his plate, smiling around at them all, he turned away and left the dining room. For a big man, he could move very silendy.

  Ananayel

  They are in the air like bats, these creatures of the night, the lesser servants of Luc
ifer. He was the first schismatic, of course, Lucifer, that onetime angel and captain of angels, my former brother. Pride was his besetting sin, and darkness his punishment. He had been very nearly as immortal as God Himself, and remained so. It was not by a foreshortening of his life, his sensations, his awareness, that he was penalized, but instead by a near-eternity of darkness, a permanent exclusion from the Light. Yes, that’s right: from the Light.

  An odd judgment, when you stop to think of it. Lucifer was punished by being given his own kingdom, his own minions, his own realm and rule; and all for the sin of pride. Pride. So an angel can be proud. An angel can sin. An angel has free will.

  We angels obey because we choose to obey. And so do his creatures. They love their louche lord, their Prince of the Powers of the Air, they love the work they do for him, and now they swarm in the night air around me like moths, reporting my movements to that nameless demon, their immediate master, who struggles so hard to keep me from accomplishing the fulfillment of God’s design. I take him, that demon, to be some minor baron in the Prince of Darkness’s vassalage, some puffed-up satrap, arrogant beglerbeg of the middle mists, powerful, but not, deo volente, so powerful as I.

  (I would not be able to stand up to Lucifer himself, and I know it, but so does he, and so does He. The Prince of Darkness, even before the Fall, was a power and a might second only to God, which is what led him to his pride and his destruction in the first place. But if Lucifer were to confront me, it would no longer be me he was confronting. I would at once be retired, so that God Himself could take my place; and in every direct encounter between those two Masters it is Lucifer who has lost, it is he who has retired from the battle in shame and pain and degradation, forked tail between cloven- hoofed legs. Like the limited wars on other people’s territories that the so-called Great Powers have indulged themselves in over the last half-century of Earth’s little history, it is only through proxies that my Master and His Opponent can contend. Lucifer will surely try to cheat, will cast about for advantage, but he will not try to overwhelm me; that would bring into play a truly Great Power.)