Brother Termite (13 page)

Wheeling, Reen came face-to-face with Jeff Womack. The President winked at his chief of staff and tucked his tie into the jacket of his pin-striped suit. “Excuse me.” Womack nudged Oomal from the stand.

“No, no, Jeff,” Reen whispered, waving his hands.

But Womack kicked the box away and leaned down into the microphones. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.”

The crowd came out of its trance with a thunderstorm of applause. Womack beamed into the cameras. Hands were shooting up all over the East Room.

Womack bent forward, and the audience went breathless with quiet. “I am pleased to announce that, at seven-thirty this morning, Eastern Standard Time, I signed the Tariff Deregulation Bill into law.”

“What is this?” Oomal hissed, turning to Reen. “What’s he doing?”

Reen was too stunned, too terrified to answer. The President was a loose cannon, and the Cousins were trapped with it on a small boat. One roll the wrong way, and they would be crushed.

Womack waited for the excited whispers to die down. “And I have another announcement, one of great historical importance.”

Reen wondered frantically how he could remove Womack from the lectern. Did the President know about the sterilization plan? And if so, had he picked this moment to tell Cousin secrets? Reen and Oomal would be murdered where they stood. Not even the Secret Service would intervene to save them.

“I’ve served without a vice president for two years, and the time has come to correct that. Right now,” Womack went on, checking his watch, “the Senate is voting to approve my choice for a new vice president, and I would like to take this opportunity to introduce him.”

Reen gasped. Someone was standing in the shadow beyond the door.

“He is a man with a great deal of political experience,” Womack continued, “and someone I’m sure you will all recognize.” He swept his arm to the side. “The spirit of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

Bursting into the East Room, Jeremy Holt, the medium, held his hand high in greeting. Womack patted him on the back. The medium, needing no encouragement, bellied up to the microphones.

With a boyish, disarming smile Holt said, “Ah, thank you,” even though no applause, not even a murmur, had been offered. “It’s nice to be back.”

Reen took in the broad Bostonian accent and the twinkle in the eyes, and even though it lay a century away, Camelot came rushing back. Of all the presidents he had known, he hated Kennedy the most. Dangerous Kennedy with his smiling eyes.

Those mannerisms: the tip of the head, the casual grace that only long-standing wealth could buy, Kennedy stood in Jeremy Holt’s body. Kennedy, the once and future king.

“I’ve, ah, been privy to some interesting information on the other side.”

Dizzily Reen felt Oomal grab his sleeve. There was a humming in his ears, a prickly dryness in his throat. He felt his mouth open and wondered if he was about to say something or simply scream,

“Ah, first of all, there
was
a gunman on the grassy knoll,” Kennedy said with a pleasant smile. “The FBI marksman beyond the fence was put there by J. Edgar Hoover, while Lee Harvey Oswald, like Sirhan Sirhan later, was under total alien control. My brother’s death was a payoff, ah, to the FBI for helping the aliens get rid of me. Now, I thank President Womack for his appointment, and I promise to bring myself up to date on some of the history I’ve missed. I’m sure you, ah, have a great many questions, so I will take them now.”

Except for an annoying buzz from one of the kliegs, the East Room was silent.

In the back of the room a hesitant hand rose.

“Yes?”

The reporter stood. The crowd craned their necks. “Uh, Gordon Appleton,
London Times.”

“Yes?”

Appleton took a deep breath and brought his question out in a stammer: “S-sir? Is it true about you and M-Marilyn Monroe?”

AS KENNEDY
answered
questions, Womack turned and quickly left the East Room, Reen at his heels.

“How could you do this to me?” Reen cried.

On the steps Womack paused, his hand on the banister. “Everything’s coming to a head, termite. There’s blood on the floor in the basement. Watch your back.”

Womack continued his climb, Reen followed. “You tell me to watch my back and then you nominate Kennedy as your vice president? You know when he was president I had him killed. How could you do this?”

“No time, termite. No time.” Womack topped the stairs and scurried for his suite.

Pewter light from the high windows flooded the huge room. On the desk a McDonald’s Happy Meal sat half eaten.

“You know I’m in danger,” Reen protested as he watched Womack rummage through the dry bar’s cabinet. “I was kidnapped yesterday. Don’t you even care? A bomb went off at Dulles right where I was supposed to be. The commuter ship was sabotaged. You were the one who told me to fire Krupner. I cannot help but wonder what the Germans would have told me had they lived, I have been called to appear before a Senate subcommittee. The subpoena is lying in a blackberry bush somewhere in Virginia, and you appoint
Kennedy!”

Womack turned, a pistol in his hand. Reen staggered backward. His hip collided with the open door.

Womack’s preoccupied eyes swept past him as though Reen were too insignificant to register. Turning to the mantel, he set the pistol on it. “Forget about the subpoena. I signed the tariff bill. They’re not after you now. Besides, the Senate’s not the problem. Something big is going on. I always tried to do the right thing. Well ... nearly always. Do you think history will realize that?”

Although the President seemed to have forgotten about its existence, Reen stared at the pistol. “What are you doing with a gun?”

“Oh, God! I know too much, termite!” Womack cried. His skin was taut over the bones of his cheeks. His eyes were so wide, Reen could see the halo of white around the irises. “All I wanted was gossip. You know how I love gossip. Now they’re all after me. They know I have proof. So I had to choose a vice president, you see? There’s danger ahead: bogs and quicksand and knee-deep shit. I mean, there comes a time when you have to put politics away and think about duty and morality and all that crap, you know? Jesus. I took an oath, didn’t I? Nobody has the political skills to take my place but Kennedy.” He cocked his head and said wistfully, “I always pictured myself as being a little like Kennedy, you know.”

Reen approached Womack, holding wary hands up. “Sit down, Jeff. Let me call a doctor. Getting upset this way ...”

Head still cocked, Womack asked, “Tell me, termite. All in all, don’t you think I was a little like Kennedy?”

“I hated Kennedy,” Reen moaned. “You know that. I can’t believe you’d betray me like this.” Tali. Womack. The Sleep Master. Everyone was turning on him.

Womack looked around the room.

“What are you looking for?”

“I forget,” Womack said vaguely, patting his pockets. “I lose things. My ballpoint pens. My mind. My soul.” He chuckled. “They’ll never find it. They don’t know where to look. But they know I have evidence. Records. Pictures. I’ve got it all. So I have to keep the gun handy, termite. Maybe I’ll kill a few of them first. Tell me, do you think life’s worth living anyway? Listen.” He bent down and whispered into Reen’s ear. “The Secret Service can’t be trusted.”

Reen stiffened in alarm. “Do you think that is how the graffiti got on the walls? The Secret Service? Of course, you must be right. How else could someone have written that without being seen?”

Clapping his hands to his cheeks, Womack gave Reen a long-suffering sigh. “I mean they’ve gotten to the Secret Service. That’s what I mean! I tried to tell you! I tried!”

“You tried to tell me what?”

“Shhh!” He put a finger to his mouth for emphasis. “There’s bugs in the walls. Bugs in the walls. And they’re listening through the window. They have stuff that can do that, you know.”

“But who wrote the graffiti?”

“Jeee-sus! Important things are going on. Will you forget about the graffiti? I was the one who wrote the damned graffiti.”

“You?” Reen asked dumbly. “You did it?”

“Get with the program, termite! Start thinking bad guys, okay? Start thinking assassinations.”

Reen’s indignation gathered. He could feel its chill weight at his neck. He backed away from Womack. “You no longer exist,” he hissed, giving the President a level, malicious gaze. “You are in that place where the eye does not see.”

Womack looked startled, but there was no way for him to fully understand what this meant. Only Marian could know. Marian, who understood endings.

“Come on. Don’t be a jerk,” Womack told him. “The graffiti–the Secret Service knew all about it. And we had a good laugh. I was messing with you, okay? I was getting under your skin a little, that’s all. It’s fun to get you rattled.”

Reen would never forgive the President’s treachery, just as he would never forgive his Brother’s; but it would have taken a Community decision to do with Tali what Reen was doing now with Womack. “I cannot identify your face. I do not recognize your voice.” Reen turned and stalked from the room.

Womack’s apology trailed after him down the hall. “I said I was sorry. You wishing I was dead or something? Come on, termite. You sound like a three-year-old.”

It would not be as if Womack was dead but as if he had never been. Even as Reen shoved that love away, he could feel it tugging at his sleeve, demanding attention.

“Reen!” Womack called.

Head high, back rigid, Reen walked to the stairs.

Womack hobbled after, threw himself in front of Reen. “I’m sorry, okay? I’ve got my sad face on, see?”

Reen stepped around him.

“Termite?” Womack’s voice was thick with hurt.

Reen turned the corner and started down the stairs. His knees gave out, and he huddled there, mourning his loss.

Below, the press conference was breaking up. Jeremy Holt, Kennedy still occupying his body, swept down the hall at Reen’s feet, a broad white grin on his lips. The rectangle of light on the carpet blinked out as a cameraman in the East Room extinguished the kliegs.

A moment later Oomal emerged, paused in the corridor, and looked up the steps. “Reen? Are you all right, Cousin Brother?”

“No,” Reen replied. “Thural warned me of my temper, and he was right. My anger has caused me to do something stupid.”

Oomal came and sat down beside him. “Tell me.”

With a catch in his voice Reen said, “I threw Jeff Womack away, Brother, and I don’t know how I will be able to bear it. From now on he will talk to me, and I can no longer hear. From now on I will look at him and no longer see. Our friendship is over.” Reen peered through the brass banister rails to the floor below, imprisoned by his own decision.

“It’ll get better as time goes on,” Oomal said softly. “You’ll get used to it. Can I do anything?”

“Leave me alone,” Reen whispered.

Oomal hesitated, then got to his feet and padded quietly down the carpeted steps.

Love dies,
Marian had told him. She was wrong. Love never died. Only relationships. And they left love festering behind.

He could hear the chairs in the East Room being folded for storage, the podium being put away. Soon the room would be cleared. Sitting, staring between the bars, Reen carefully folded and put away one by one the memories of Womack.

Jeff, a young President just two months in office, standing in the hot, whipping wind of the Vandenberg base, the aftershock of having learned of aliens and secret treaties still trembling in his face. His hand coming forward, a whispered word from an advisor, and the hand jerking back nervously to his side. Reen looking up at this new President and wondering how they would get along.

Fists pounding the table eight months later, Jeff’s red-faced shouts of “No! No! You don’t have the right!” and Reen telling him mildly that treaties were worthless and their landing inevitable. How much younger they had both been: Reen, unused to humans, pushing too hard; Jeff, unused to Reen, glaring at him as though he were a monster.

Less than a month later both of them facing each other across the oval doughnut of the UN’s National Security Council table. The banks of cameras, the hush, the other members fearful and silent in their knowledge that the Cousin ships could outfly a plane and send conflicting messages into the brain of a missile. Reen, Loving Helpers around him like a living wall, because if a gun was fired, they would die for him–ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand of them, if need be. Reen watching Jeff calmly as the new President shouted, “Why should these nations give up their sovereignty? It isn’t in the interests of the United States that they become colonies.” And Reen, who had learned to see behind human words into that dim region of what was left unsaid, recognizing the President’s dark mirth.

A little show for the cameras. Jeff had taught him that. “Wave at the cameras,” he said a year later as they stood on the White House portico. And in the Green Room, before the fireplace, the crumbs of their finger sandwiches dusting their empty plates, the remains of brown coffee ringing the bottom of their cups, Jeff pointing to Reen’s chair and telling him about all the heads of state who had once sat there.

Jeff was a student of history, a pupil of human nature, a scholar of vice. Jeff had taught Reen well.

Thinking back, Reen couldn’t remember when partnership became love. Affection entered as stealthily as a cat into a strange room, until without warning there it was in Reen’s lap, purring and warm.

Now he stood and brushed at his legs, as if shooing it away. Below him, the East Room was silent. A maid, dustcloth in hand, passed across the hall on her way to the pantry.

Jeff, slapping Reen lightly on the arm and laughing at something he said that he hadn’t meant to be funny. Jeff, poking him lightly, playfully in the side with his finger and for the first time calling him termite.

When had that been? Reen wondered. The years flowed into each other like rain into a calm sea.

Upstairs, a clap–loud and sharp. Reen lifted his head curiously and heard swift footsteps from the elevator. Another clap, different from the first. The slam of a door. A slight clank as the elevator descended.

Somewhere in the quiet building a maid was running a vacuum cleaner. The smell of frying green peppers drifted up from the kitchen.

The elevator clanked again, once, as it ascended. More footsteps, slower now, but determined. A door above opened with a squeal of hinges.

Whispers, murmurs, a choked “Goddamn.”

A thunder of steps, and a Secret Serviceman rounded the top of the stairs at a dead run. He nearly fell over Reen. His face was pale. His forehead and upper lip glistened with sweat.

“Go to the West Wing desk immediately, sir!” The man took Reen’s arm forcefully, nearly pulling him off his feet. “Find Miller. Can you remember that? Agent Miller. Stay with him until we have the situation under control.”

“What is it?”

“The President’s been shot.” Suddenly the man was gone. Reen stumbled up the stairs.

In the study two men stood staring down at Jeff Womack. Jeff lay in that place where the eye did not see and yet, in the light from the windows that was the color of old silver, Reen saw everything clearly.

Jeff was sitting in the rocking chair, his neck crimped back hard against the rest. The McDonald’s Happy Meal scented the room with onions; Jeff scented it with blood. His eyes were open, and he was regarding the ceiling with surprise. Behind him on the cheerful yellow carpet was a feathery spray of brains.

“Have somebody call the Senate and see if they’ve confirmed,” one of the men said, glancing at his watch.

The other man hurried away. A doctor and a nurse ran in.

“Let’s get him on the floor,” the doctor said sharply, grabbing the President by the front of his jacket and pulling him out of the chair.

Jeff punching Reen in the side and calling him, for the first time, termite. Jeff tumbling bonelessly, heavily to the carpet, the back of his skull staining the yellow red. Jeff with the doctor tearing his shirt open, buttons flying, one button bouncing like popcorn off the gun that lay a few feet away.

“Get me an airway.”

Brown eyes as wide and unblinking as a Cousin’s. Hands curled, the palms perfect and pink as shells. The long, groaning, hopeless sigh from the dead chest as the heels of the doctor’s rhythmic hands compressed the lungs.

“What time do you call it, Doctor?” the man in the suit asking.

The doctor snapping back, “I haven’t called it yet.”

“His goddamned brains are all over the floor.”

The doctor, kneeling, pushed at Jeff’s chest. But couldn’t he tell that that wasn’t what needed attention? Jeff’s pink brain was pushing through his white hair as though some deformed creature were squirming its way to birth.

Put it back in,
Reen thought.
Please put it back in.
They should, all of them, find the pieces scattered on the rug and put them back inside the splintered bone where they belong.