The girl blinked at him as if she were amazed by the vagueness of her thoughts.
His shoulders hunched, strangling fury in his throat. He turned away with as much dignity as he could manage, and strode out 'into the sunlight, letting the door slam behind him. Hellfire! he swore to himself. Hellfire and bloody damnation.
Giddy with rage, he looked up and down the street. He could see the whole ominous length of the town from where he stood. In the direction of Haven Farm, the small businesses stood close together like teeth poised on either side of the road. The sharp sunlight made him feel vulnerable and alone. He checked his hands quickly for scratches or abrasions, then hurried down the gauntlet, as he moved, his numb feet felt unsure on the sidewalk, as if the cement were slick with despair. He believed that he displayed courage by not breaking into a run.
In a few moments the courthouse loomed ahead of him. On the sidewalk before it stood the old beggar. He had not moved. He was still staring at the sun, still muttering meaninglessly. His sign said, Beware, uselessly, like a warning that came too late.
As Covenant approached, he was struck by how dispossessed the old man looked. Beggars and fanatics, holy men, prophets of the apocalypse did not belong on that street in that sunlight; the frowning, belittling eyes of the stone columns held no tolerance for such preterite exaltation. And the scant coins he had collected were not enough for even one meal. The sight gave Covenant an odd pang of compassion. Almost in spite of himself, he stopped in front of the old man.
The beggar made no gesture, did not shift his contemplation of the sun; but his voice altered, and one clear word broke out of the formless hum:
“Give.”
The order seemed to be directed at Covenant personally. As if on command, his gaze dropped to the bowl again. But the demand, the effort of coercion, brought back his anger. I don't owe you anything, he snapped silently.
Before he could pull away, the old man spoke again.
“I have warned you.”
Unexpectedly, the statement struck Covenant like an insight, an intuitive summary of all his experiences in the past year. Through his anger, his decision came immediately. With a twisted expression on his face, he fumbled for his wedding ring.
He had never before removed his white gold wedding band; despite his divorce, and Joan's unanswering silence, he had kept the ring on his finger. It was an icon of himself. It reminded him of where he had been and where he was-of promises made and broken, companionship lost, helplessness-and of his vestigial humanity. Now he tore it off his left hand and dropped it in the bowl. “That's worth more than a few coins,” he said, and stamped away.
“Wait.”
The word carried such authority that Covenant stopped again. He stood still, husbanding his rage, until he felt the man's hand on his arm. Then he turned and looked into pale blue eyes as blank as if they were still studying the secret fire of the sun. The old man was tall with power.
A sudden insecurity, a sense of proximity to matters he did not understand, disturbed Covenant. But he pushed it away. “Don't touch me. I'm a leper.”
The vacant stare seemed to miss him completely, as if he did not exist or the eyes were blind; but the old man's voice was clear and sure.
“You are in perdition, my son.”
Moistening his lips with his tongue, Covenant responded, “No, old man. This is normal-human beings are like this. Futile.” As if he were quoting a law of leprosy, he said to himself, Futility is the defining characteristic of life. “That's what life is like. I just have less bric-a-brac cluttering up the facts than most people.”
“So young-and already so bitter.”
Covenant had not heard sympathy for a long time, and the sound of it affected him acutely. His anger retreated, leaving his throat tight and awkward. “Come on, old man,” he said. “We didn't make the world. All we have to do is live in it. We're all in the same boat-one way or another.”
“Did we not?”
But without waiting for an answer the beggar went back to humming his weird tune. He held Covenant there until he had reached a break in his song. Then a new quality came into his voice, an aggressive tone that took advantage of Covenant's unexpected vulnerability.
“Why not destroy yourself?”
A sense of pressure expanded in Covenant's chest, cramping his heart. The pale blue eyes were exerting some kind of peril over him. Anxiety tugged at him. He wanted to jerk away from the old face, go through his VSE, make sure that he was safe. But he could not; the blank gaze held him. Finally, he said, “That's too easy.”
His reply met no opposition, but still his trepidation grew. Under the duress of the old man's will, he stood on the precipice of his future and looked down at jagged, eager dangers-rough damnations multiplied below him. He recognized the various possible deaths of lepers. But the panorama steadied him. It was like a touchstone of familiarity in a fantastic situation; it put him back on known ground. He found that he could turn away from his fear to say, “Look, is there anything I can do for you? Food? A place to stay? You can have what I've got.”
As if Covenant had said some crucial password, the old man's eyes lost their perilous cast.
“You have done too much. Gifts like this I return, to the giver.”
He extended his bowl toward Covenant.
“Take back the ring. Be true. You need not fail.”
Now the tone of command was gone. In its place, Covenant heard gentle supplication. He hesitated, wondering what this old man had to do with him. But he had to make some kind of response. He took the ring and replaced it on his left hand. Then he said, “Everybody fails. But I am going to survive as long as I can.”
The old man sagged, as if he had just shifted a load of prophecy or commandment onto Covenant's shoulders. His voice sounded frail now.
“That is as it may be.”
Without another word, he turned and moved away. He leaned on his staff like an exhausted prophet, worn out with uttering visions. His staff rang curiously on the sidewalk, as if the wood were harder than cement.
Covenant gazed after the wind-swayed ochre robe and the fluttering hair until the old man turned a corner and vanished. Then he shook himself, started into his VSE. But his eyes stopped on his wedding ring. The band seemed to hang loosely on his finger, as if it were too big for him. Perdition, he thought. A deposit has been made. I've got to do something before they barricade the streets against me.
For a while, he stood where he was and tried to think of a course of action. Absently, he looked up the courthouse columns to the stone heads. They had careless eyes and on their lips a spasm of disgust carved into perpetual imminence, compelling and forever incomplete. They gave him an idea. Casting a silent curse at them, he started down the walk again. He had decided to see his lawyer, to demand that the woman who handled his contracts and financial business find some legal recourse against the kind of black charity which was cutting him off from the town. Get those payments revoked, he thought. It's not possible that they can pay my debts-without my consent.
The lawyer's office was in a building at the corner of a cross street on the opposite side of the road. A minute's brisk walking brought Covenant to the corner and the town's only traffic light. He felt a need to hurry, to act on his decision before his distrust of lawyers and all public machinery convinced him that his determination was folly. He had to resist a temptation to cross against the light.
The signal changed slowly, but at last it was green his way. He stepped out onto the crosswalk.
Before he had taken three steps, he heard a siren. Red lights flaring, a police car sprang out of an alley into the main street. It skidded and swerved with the speed of its turn, then aimed itself straight at Covenant's heart.