Human… and something of a whore.
‘How can you work for these… discontinuities?’
‘I owe them my survival. So do you.’
‘I hate them.’
‘They come to see me. They are, as you might imagine, troubled. An intolerable case load. I try my best. I listen to them, but I can’t give them what they want.’
‘They want—?’
‘Memories. Real memories, with a bite. They tell me of their lovers, friends, careers, obsessions, but it all happened to somebody else. Seaman Sparks wants me to teach him what music was like, good music – jazz, baroque, not the treacle they pump through the intercom. He would have played the flute. Then there’s Lieutenant Grass. He’s trying to recall his brother – fishing trips, touch football. It’s rare for relatives actually to find each other. Not enough time, too big a continent, and if they do connect the ages are usually wrong. Old women run across their pre-adolescent husbands. Newlyweds stumble into their middle-aged children.’
‘Are they always sad?’ George asked.
‘They have their flashes – moments you and I would call satisfaction, even joy. But most of the time, life is something they read about in a book. Yesterday Seaman Raskin said to me, “Imagine sittings in a gray, still, empty room, taking an endless true-or-false test, getting each question right, and realizing you’ll never experience anything else.”’ She nicked her desk with the sacrificial knife. ‘Don’t ever confuse unadmittance with living, George.’
‘I still hate them. Anybody would have signed that sales contract.’
‘Let me guess. You’re feeling… betrayed? Framed? Manipulated?’
‘All those things.’
‘Manipulated by your therapist? By the darkbloods?’
‘Both. You never cared about me.’
‘Don’t say what you know isn’t true.’
‘You just wanted to patch me together so I’d be fit to stand trial.’
With the sacrificial knife she began flipping back pages of Scarlet Passions. ‘Give me your Leonardo.’
‘What makes you think I have it?’
‘Give it to me.’
He pulled the painting from his shirt. She received it respectfully, holding it by the edges.
‘I don’t know what to make of this.’ Morning touched her unconceived daughter’s hair. ‘But I like what it shows. I like everything about it. Your hand is almost on my breast.’
She’s starting to get it right, he thought. Love. Marriage. Sex. Children. Species regeneration. ‘I must find a city with marble walls. They cure infertility there.’
‘It could be a hoax, of course,’ she said. ‘Nadine Covington’s bid for revenge.’
‘I believe the painting. So do you.’ Love. Marriage. Sex. But not necessarily in that order. ‘Tonight we’ll have a drink together in the Silver Dollar Casino.’
‘No.’
‘If we’re going to marry and raise a family, we should get to know each other.’
‘I cannot have a drink with you.’ She returned the Leonardo. ‘The darkbloods are here, George. They have gained the continent. Do you truly understand your situation? If the judges find against you, nothing we want – a wedding, Aubrey, her siblings – none of it will happen.’ Leaning toward him, she spoke in a frantic whisper. ‘From now on, we must never be seen together. We can’t let anyone claim that I lack objectivity. “Dr Valcourt? Oh, she’s his ex-therapist, nothing more.” I’m coming to your trial, friend. Morning Valcourt, witness for the defense. I know something that will help your case.’
‘I won’t just walk away from you. I won’t.’
Her conspiratorial voice dropped even lower. ‘You will. Until the hour of my testimony, I’ll be gone from your life. Do you understand? Gone. Searching for me will prove futile. No one can master the back passageways here, the dead ends.’
‘What do you know that will help my case?’
‘I know that I care deeply about you.’
They parted not by kissing, not by hugging, but by discreetly brushing their fingertips together. For George it was one of the most fleshly and impassioned experiences of his life. The sensation lingered in his hands. The pleasure stayed in his memory, waiting to be called up whenever he wanted to feel it.
Captain Sverre was right. A year is nothing. So far, at age thirty-five, George had known twelve thousand days full of physical sensations, many of them astonishingly wonderful – drinking coffee, reading to his daughter, touching fingertips with Morning Valcourt. But a year is nothing. No wonder the unadmitted wanted to hang him.
The Erebus Poker Club did not accomplish much poker that weekend. Brat kept forgetting what beat a straight. Whenever it was Wengernook’s deal, he couldn’t remember which cards should go up and which down. Overwhite got the chips confused, insisting that he was betting five dollars when he was really betting one.
‘These damn zombies,’ said Brat. ‘They just don’t seem real to me, know what I mean? I wouldn’t be surprised to hear this whole business was being cooked up in Moscow.’ Not a single aspect of the general – posture, visage, tone of voice – suggested that he believed himself. The unadmitted were here. They had gained the continent. They were as real as South African granite.
‘Provided that the conservation of electric charge and the balance between particles and antiparticles are obeyed,’ said Randstable, ‘there is nothing to stop a lot of molecules, even organic molecules, from materializing and then combining into lifeforms… er, assuming that the discrepancy is never noticed, of course.’
‘And if the discrepancy is noticed?’ asked Wengernook.
‘The molecules disappear, naturally,’ said Randstable.
‘But we did notice,’ said Brat. ‘And the zombies are still around.’
‘That’s got me stumped too,”’ said Randstable.
‘Know what I think, William?’ said Wengernook. ‘I think you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’
‘I wonder if we’ll get a fair trial,’ said George.
‘I wonder if wishes are horses,’ said Brat. He tried to shuffle, made a mess of it. ‘Believe me, fellas, the whole thing is a sham, like those show trials of Stalin’s. Our best chance would be a prison break.’
‘My father was a lawyer,’ said Wengernook. ‘All those counts against us – it’s what you call a retroactive indictment. We didn’t violate any laws, so they had to go out and invent some, ex post facto. If Bonenfant knows his stuff, he’ll get the case dismissed for lack of precedents.’
‘Maybe we should testify,’ said Overwhite. He checked himself for jaw tumors. ‘I see their point of view, more or less.’
‘Hell, Brian, they’re a bunch of hanging judges,’ said Brat. ‘This is vigilante vengeance. Don’t you understand?’
‘I think we owe them something,’ said Overwhite.
‘We owe them nothing,’ said Brat.
‘We owe them an explanation,’ insisted Overwhite.
‘We’re innocent,’ said Wengernook.
‘They’re more innocent,’ said Overwhite.
‘If I was in their shoes,’ said George, ‘I’d be curious about a lot of things too.’
She was not in her office. She was not in the skating rink. The bowling alley held no trace of her. The movie theater was empty.
He stayed for the feature, Panic in the Year Zero. In this low-budget melodrama from American International, Ray Milland survived a thermonuclear holocaust by driving into the country in a car full of groceries.
He went to the library. Morning was not there. He found a college biology text, leafed through it. The section on the male reproductive system was surprisingly detailed and frank. A gonad appeared in cross-section. Explicit drawings depicted the seminiferous tubules, the spermatids, the spermatogonia, and the spermatocytes. ‘Your secondary spermatocytes are failing to become spermatids,’ Dr Brust had told him. He closed the book and smiled with satisfaction. When I get to the marble city, he thought, I’ll be able to tell them exactly what needs doing…