I thought, fiercely, it’s symbolic. You’d float, not drown. I wondered how long the mercury would continue to snake out of the spigot. That depended on whatever the hell the pipe tapped into. That basin. However big that basin was. I looked at Walter, who was scrutinizing the grotto, face set in severe concentration.
Robert Shelburne simply turned his back on the grotto. He fully faced his brother. He took off his parka and dropped it on the ground.
“What are you doing?” Henry asked.
Robert didn’t answer. He pulled off the next layer, a fleece sweatshirt. Dropped it on the ground. He was stripped down to his green Club One Fitness T-shirt.
“You don’t need to do that,” Henry said. “Clothes don’t get wet in quicksilver.”
Robert lifted the green shirt.
Walter shot me a warning look but there was no need. I wasn’t going to speak, move, do anything at all. It was all I could do to stifle my sudden hope. I’d forgotten that Robert was wearing his brother’s belt. I stared at the big silver belt buckle with the curlicue lettering. Back at the lab, his display of the Quicksilver buckle was sure effective, sure worked on Walter and me. Sure got us to the contract-signing.
I watched Henry, wondering if it was working on him.
Henry’s face was closed. Unreadable.
“Our father had the heart of a snake,” Robert said. “It’s just us now, Henry. Look, I’m wearing your belt. I’ll take on every burden of Quicksilver.”
Henry was silent.
“Or, you want me to take it off?” Robert began to unbuckle the belt.
“Keep it on,” Henry said. “It won’t get wet.”
18
Robert Shelburne stood at the mouth of the grotto.
His hands were on his hips. His green fitness T-shirt showed bare arms, muscles flexed. He looked ready to run. Or fight.
“I don’t want to shoot,” Henry said.
Robert said, over his shoulder, “You don’t need to.” He went in.
He skirted the pothole, hugging the south wall, leaving us a view of the works, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the flowing mercury. He tipped his head to follow the flow, down to the pool.
I tried to estimate how much mercury had accumulated. If that had been water it would drown a small animal. But it was liquid metal. Thirteen times denser than water. A small animal would float. A large animal would float. A full-grown man would float, buoyant as a cork.
Robert Shelburne was examining the pool as if doing his own calculations.
I glanced at Walter. He was frowning deeply. Watching the scene in the grotto. And then again breaking his focus to take a slow survey of the lay of the land. I figured my partner was estimating distances, angles of fire, places to take shelter. I assumed he was concocting a scenario in which Henry’s attention faltered long enough for us to flee. That seemed unlikely. Further, that didn’t sit too well with me. Flee and leave Robert at risk? Go get help? That would take hours.
“Sit,” Henry called to his brother.
Robert Shelburne did not have hours.
I watched him work up his nerve. He stamped his feet, one and then the other, like a guy preparing to wade into an icy river. And then he stepped down into the quicksilver pool.
The liquid lapped his thick-soled Asolo boots. The stuff was so dense it pushed them back, his feet could get no traction. His body revolved trying to maintain its balance but every little move popped a foot out of the mercury, skittering for purchase, and then abruptly he gave it up and folded heavily down into the pool in a cross-legged sit.
Not into the pool. Onto the pool.
He put out his hands to brace himself on the surface and then snatched them away from the liquid.
Don’t worry, I would have said — if he was asking — liquid mercury is very poorly absorbed through the skin and you could probably sit naked on there all day and take in only point oh-oh something percent if I recalled correctly from Chem 101.
He found his balance. He sat very still. He folded his hands in his lap. He sat there like a Buddha on a lotus. For a moment he wore a childlike look of wonder and then he flashed us a fucking grin. “Game on, Bro.”
I shook my head. Some kind of inbred Shelburne bravado or venture-capital training — who knew but he had adjusted his game. Stakes rise? Man up.
“Kinda cold in here,” Robert said. “This shit’s cold.”
Henry’s hands began to shake. He jammed his elbows into his flanks and steadied himself.
Robert said, “We still playing the same game? Where I’m supposed to guess what to apologize for?”
Henry nodded.
“Give me a hint. Give me something I can work with.”
“At the river,” Henry whispered. Voice softer than ever, breakable.
“Little louder, Bro.”
“At the river.” Loud enough to make Robert flinch. “At the river,” Henry said a third time, “when I heard you and Cam talk about your company.”
“Yeah?”
“Cam said, what if Henry finds out? Maybe we should bring Henry in.”
“Yeah?” Robert said, voice tightening.
“What did you say to that, R?”
“Some bullshit.”
“What did you say, R?”
“I’m apologizing.”
“What did you say, R?”
“You want the exact words?”
“That’s what I want.”
Robert hunched forward. He was shivering now.
Henry said, “What did you…”
“I said, Henry would not be an asset in my world.”
My heart squeezed.
Henry unzipped his belt bag. “That’s what you said.”
Walter grunted and looked away, shifting from foot to foot, almost skittish.
Yeah, I thought, that’s it. Game over. I waited for… I didn’t know what. Henry to shoot? He didn’t want to shoot. He’d said so. And he wasn’t aiming the damn Glock, he was unzipping his belt bag and whatever he took out of that bag had to be better than the Glock. Better for Robert. Better for us. Better for Henry. Henry wasn’t a killer. Henry was a damaged soul. A wounded soul, betrayed by his father and his brother, not an asset in their world, surely not an asset in anybody’s world. Hurt to the core. A man in the wrong century. And all he wanted now, here, was an apology from his brother.
I waited for Robert to apologize so we could all go home.
Robert just gave his brother that appraising look of his.
I wanted to scream. Will you please apologize? You’ve already said the words a dozen times. Doesn’t matter if you meant them. Doesn’t matter how glib you are if you can’t spit it out one more time. When it counts.
Walter spoke. “I would like to sit.”
I gaped at my partner. That’s all you got?
Henry jerked a shoulder. Go ahead and sit. Or maybe it was just one of Henry’s twitches. Didn’t matter. Walter cleared pebbles from a space with his boot and sank to the ground like an old man and Henry kept his wounded attention on Robert.
Robert smiled. “You want an apology, Bro? You wander around the mountains like some kind of original man and you think you know what a business deal is? You think it’s unfair I left you out in the cold?”
I tensed. Careful Robert, you’re insulting him, I hope you know that.
Henry flushed, a deeper pink than the pink of his peeling nose.
Robert rolled his shoulders and put his hands flat on the surface of the pool. This time he didn’t flinch at the touch. He relaxed into a more comfortable position. He looked like a man lazing on a raft waiting for someone to bring him a Margarita. He cocked his head to appraise his brother. “Not a world where you’d thrive, Henry.”
Henry blinked. “You either.”