As the doctor made a snatch for one of the escaping monkeys, Jerome crossed swiftly to the remaining cages and unhatched them all. The animals leaped to their freedom. Welles had succeeded with his recapture, however, and had the protesting monkey in his grip, about to deliver the panacea. Jerome made toward him.
“Let it be,” he yelled.
Welles pressed the hypodermic into the monkey’s body, but before he could depress the plunger Jerome had pulled at his wrist. The hypodermic spat its poison into the air and then fell to the ground. The monkey, wresting itself free, followed.
Jerome pulled Welles close. “I told you to let it be,” he said.
Welles’s response was to drive his fist into Jerome’s wounded flank. Tears of pain spurted from his eyes, but he didn’t release the doctor. The stimulus, unpleasant as it was, could not dissuade him from holding that beating heart close. He wished, embracing Welles like a prodigal, that he could ignite himself, that the dream of burning flesh he had endured would now become a reality, consuming maker and made in one cleansing flame. But his flesh was only flesh; his bone, bone. What miracles he had seen had been a private revelation, and now there was no time to communicate their glories or their horrors. What he had seen would die with him, to be rediscovered (perhaps) by some future self, only to be forgotten and discovered again. Like the story of love the radio had told; the same joy lost and found, found and lost. He stared at Welles with new comprehension dawning, hearing still the terrified beat of the man’s heart. The doctor was wrong. If he left the man to live, he would come to know his error. They were not presagers of the millennium. They had both been dreaming.
“Don’t kill me,” Welles pleaded. “I don’t want to die.” More fool you, Jerome thought, and let the man go.
Welles’s bafflement was plain. He couldn’t believe that his appeal for life had been answered. Anticipating a blow with every step he took he backed away from Jerome, who simply turned his back on the doctor and walked away.
From downstairs there came a shout, and then may shouts. Police, Welles guessed. They had presumably found the body of the officer who’d been on guard at the door. In moments only they would be coming up the stairs. There was no time now for finishing the tasks he’d come here to perform. He had to be away before they arrived.
On the floor below Carnegie watched the armed officers disappear up the stairs. There was a faint smell of burning in the air. He feared the worst.
I am the man who comes in after the act, he thought to himself. I am perpetually upon the scene when the best of the action is over. Used as he was to waiting, patient as a loyal dog, this time he could not hold his anxieties in check while the others went ahead. Disregarding the voices advising him to wait, he began up the stairs.
The laboratory on the top floor was empty but for the monkeys and Johannson’s corpse.
The toxicologist lay on his face where he had fallen, neck broken. The emergency exit, which let on to the fire escape, was open; smoky air was being sucked out through it. As Carnegie stepped away from Johannson’s body officers were already on the fire escape calling to their colleagues below to seek out the fugitive.
“Sir?”
Carnegie looked across at the mustachioed individual who had approached him.
“What is it?”
The officer pointed to the other end of the laboratory, to the test chamber. There was somebody at the window. Carnegie recognized the features, even though they were much changed. It was Jerome. At first he thought the man was watching him, but a short perusal scotched that idea. Jerome was staring, tears on his face, at his own reflection in the smeared glass. Even as Carnegie watched, the face retreated with the gloom of the chamber.
Other officers had noticed the man too. They were moving down the length of the laboratory, taking up positions behind the benches where they had a good line on the door, weapons at the ready. Carnegie had been present in such situations before; they had their own, terrible momentum, Unless he intervened, there would be blood.
“No,” he said, “hold your fire.”
He pressed the protesting officer aside and began to walk down the laboratory, making no attempt to conceal his advance. He walked past sinks in which the remains of Blind Boy guttered, past the bench under which, a short while ago, they’d found the dead Dance. A monkey, its head bowed, dragged itself across his path, apparently deaf to his proximity. He let it find a hole to die in, then moved on to the chamber door. It was ajar. He reached for the handle. Behind him the laboratory had fallen completely silent; all eyes were on him. He pulled the door open. Fingers tightened on triggers. There was no attack however. Carnegie stepped inside.
Jerome was standing against the opposite wall. If he saw Carnegie enter, or heard him, he made no sign of it. A dead monkey lay at his feet, one hand still grasping the hem of his trousers. Another whimpered in the corner, holding its head in its hands.
“Jerome?”
Was it Carnegie’s imagination, or could he smell strawberries?
Jerome blinked.
“You’re under arrest,” Carnegie said. Hendrix would appreciate the irony of that, he thought. The man moved his bloody hand from the stab wound in his side to the front of his trousers and began to stroke himself.
“Too late,” Jerome said. He could feel the last fire rising in him. Even if this intruder chose to cross the chamber and arrest him now, the intervening seconds would deny him his capture. Death was here. And what was it, now that he saw it clearly? Just another seduction, another sweet darkness to be filled up, and pleasured and made fertile.
A spasm began in his perineum, and lightning traveled in two directions from the spot, up his rod and up his spine. A laugh began in his throat.
In the corner of the chamber the monkey, hearing Jerome’s humor, began to whimper again. The sound momentarily claimed Carnegie’s attention, and when his eyes flitted back to Jerome the shortsighted eyes had closed, the hand had dropped, and he was dead, standing against the wall. For a short time the body defied gravity. Then, gracefully the legs buckled and Jerome fell forward. He was, Carnegie saw, a sack of bones, no more. It was a wonder the man had lived so long.
Cautiously, he crossed to the body and put his finger to the man’s neck. There was no pulse. The remnants of Jerome’s last laugh remained on his face, however, refusing to decay.
“Tell me…” Carnegie whispered to the man, sensing that despite hie preemption he had missed the moment; that once again he was, and perhaps would always be, merely a witness of consequences. “Tell me, What was the joke?” But the blind boy, as is the wont of his clan, wasn’t telling.