“Hi,” he said. “I’m Rusty. Wait, you know that.”
The crowd stared at him, some still retching. Linda was wiping her mouth. Some people were walking away. “Wait,” Rusty called after them. “It’s really important. It really is.” A few stopped and turned, standing with their arms folded; others kept walking. Rusty had to say something to make them stop. “Wait,” he said. “This guy’s wrong. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t patriotic. I cheated on my wife. Linda, I cheated on you, but I think you knew that. I think you were cheating on me too. It’s okay; it doesn’t matter now. I cheated on other stuff too. I cheated on my taxes. I was guilty of insider trading. I was a morally bankrupt shithead.” He pointed at the man with the quiet voice. “That’s his phrase, not mine, but it fits.” There: now he couldn’t be blackmailed.
Most of the people who’d been walking away had stopped now: good. The man with the quiet voice was hissing. “Rusty, what are you doing?”
“I’m doing what he wants me to do,” Rusty said into the microphone. “I’m, what was that word, imploring you to do the right thing.”
He stopped, out of words, and concentrated very hard on what he was going to say next. He caught a flash of purple out of the corner of his left eye. Was that another butterfly? He turned. No: it was a splendid purple bandana. The aide on the platform was waving it at Rusty. Rusty’s heart melted. He fell in love with the bandana. The bandana was the most exquisite thing he had ever seen. Who wouldn’t covet the bandana? And indeed, one of his companions, the one on the left, was snatching at it.
Rusty took a step toward the bandana and then forced himself to stop. No. The aide was trying to distract him. The aide was cheating. The bandana was a trick. Rusty still had his paperweight. He didn’t need the bandana.
Heartsick, nearly sobbing, Rusty turned back to the podium, dragging the other corpse with him. The other corpse whimpered, but Rusty prevailed. He knew that this was very important. It was as important as the paperweight in his pocket. He could no longer remember why, but he remembered that he had known once.
“Darling!” Linda said, running toward him. “Darling! I forgive you! I love you! Dear Rusty!”
She was wearing a shiny barrette. She never wore barrettes. It was another trick. Rusty began to tremble. “Linda,” he said into the microphone. “Shut up. Shut up and go away, Linda. I have to say something.”
Rusty’s other companion, the one on his right, let out a small squeal and tried to lurch toward Linda, towards the barrette. “No,” Rusty said, keeping desperate hold. “You stay here. Linda, take that shiny thing off! Hide it, Linda!”
“Darling!” she said, and the right-hand corpse broke away from Rusty and hopped off the podium, toward Linda. Linda screamed and ran, the corpse trotting after her. Rusty sighed; the aide groaned again; the quiet man cursed, softly.
“Okay,” Rusty said, “so here’s what I have to tell you.” Some of the people in the crowd who’d turned to watch Linda and her pursuer turned back toward Rusty now, but others didn’t. Well, he couldn’t do anything about that. He had to say this thing. He could remember what he had to say, but he couldn’t remember why. That was all right. He’d say it, and then maybe he’d remember.
“What I have to tell you is, dying hurts,” Rusty said. The crowd murmured. “Dying hurts a lot. It hurts—everybody hurts.” Rusty struggled to remember why this mattered. He dimly remembered dying, remembered other people dying around him. “It hurts everybody. It makes everybody the same. This guy, and that other one who ran away, they hurt too. This is Ari. That was Ahmed. They were the ones who planted the bomb. They didn’t get out in time. They died too.” Gasps, some louder murmurs, louder cursing from the man with the quiet voice. Rusty definitely had everyone’s attention now.
He prodded Ari. “It hurt,” Ari said.
“And?” said Rusty.
“We’re sorry,” said Ari.
“Ahmed’s sorry too,” said Rusty. “He told me. He’d have told you, if he weren’t chasing Linda’s shiny hair thing.”
“If we’d known, we wouldn’t have done it,” Ari said.
“Because?” Rusty said patiently.
“We did it for the wrong reasons,” Ari said. “We expected things to happen that didn’t happen. Paradise, and, like, virgins.” Ari looked shyly down at his decaying feet. “I’m sorry.”
“More,” Rusty said. “Tell them more.”
“Dying hurts,” said Ari. “It won’t make you happy. It won’t make anybody happy.”
“So please do the right thing,” said Rusty. “Don’t kill anybody else.”
The man with the quiet voice let out a howl and leaped toward Rusty. He grabbed Rusty’s free arm, the right one, and pulled; the arm came off, and the man with the quiet voice started hitting Rusty over the head with it. “You fucking incompetent! You traitor! You said you’d tell them—”
“I said I’d do the right thing,” Rusty said. “I never said my version of the right thing was the same as yours.”
“You lied!”
“No, I didn’t. I misled you, but I told the truth. What are you going to do, kill me?” He looked out at the crowd and said, “We’re the dead. You loved some of us. You hated others. We’re the dead. We’re here to tell you: please don’t kill anybody else. Everybody will be dead soon enough, whether you kill them or not. It hurts.”
The crowd stared; the cameras whirred. None of the living there that day had ever heard such long speeches from the dead. It was truly a historic occasion. A group of aides had managed to drag away the man with the quiet voice, who was still brandishing Rusty’s arm; Rusty, with his one arm, stood at the podium with Ari.
“Look,” Rusty said. He let go of Ari’s hand and reached around to pull the paperweight out of his pocket. He held it up in front of the crowd. Ari cooed and reached for it, entranced, but Rusty held it above his head. “Look at this! Look at the shiny glass. Look at the flower. It’s beautiful. You have all this stuff in your life, all this beautiful stuff. Sunshine and grass and butterflies. Barrettes. Bandanas. You don’t have that when you’re dead. That’s why dying hurts.”
And Rusty shivered, and remembered: he remembered dying, knowing he’d never see trees again, never drink coffee, never smell flowers or see buildings reflected in windows. He remembered that pain, the pain of knowing what he was losing only when it was too late. And he knew that the living wouldn’t understand, couldn’t understand. Or maybe some of them did, but the others would only make fun of them. He finished his speech lamely, miserably, knowing that everyone would say it was just a cliché. “Enjoy the beautiful stuff while you have it.”
The woman who had heckled the man with the quiet voice was frowning. “You’re advocating greed! That’s what gets people killed. People murder each other for stuff!”
“No,” Rusty said. He was exhausted. She didn’t understand. She’d probably never understand unless she died and got revived. “Just enjoy it. Look at it. Don’t fight. You don’t get it, do you?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t.”
Rusty shrugged. He was too tired; he couldn’t keep his focus anymore. He no longer cared if the woman got it or not. The man with the quiet voice had been taken away, and Rusty had done what he had wanted to do, although it seemed much less important now than it had even a month ago, when he was first revived. He remembered, dimly, that no one had ever managed to teach the living anything much. Some of them might get it. He’d done what he could. He’d told them what mattered.
His attention wandered away from the woman, away from the crowd. He brought the paperweight back down to chest level, and then he sat down on the edge of the platform, and Ari sat with him, and they both stared at the paperweight, touching it, humming in happiness there in the sunshine.