Damnation Alley (11 page)

It had been a good run so far, and he found himself thinking about its last stages. He couldn't trust Greg for a while yet. Not until they were so far that there could be no turning back. Then they'd need each other so badly that he could turn him loose. He hoped he hadn't scrambled his brains completely. He didn't know what more the Alley held. If the storms were less from here on in, however, that would be a big help.

He heard a chuckle and was on his feet, the gun in his hand.

There was no one in sight. It didn't sound as if it had come from the car, and it didn't sound like Greg's voice anyway.

It had come from within the barn, though.

With his eyes, he explored each pooi of shadow. Nothing.

Then it came again, and this time his eyes moved upward.

There was a loft.

He raised the pistol toward the opening to the rear of the building and up. He pointed it toward the dark oblong framed with straw.

"Come down!" he said.

There was no reply, not until he'd fired two shots through the opening, and then a, "Wait! I'm coming!" was their echo.

The man who hurried down the crosswise slats was covered with dark hair and rags. He was perhaps a foot shorter than Tanner, and he crouched with his back against the wall, shaking. His eyes were feral, and he held his hands before his chest, fingers hooking outward like claws.

"Who're you?"

The man's eyes darted from the barrel of the gun to Tanner's face and back again several times.

"I said, 'Who are you?' mister!"

"Kanis," said the man, "Geoffrey Kanis," and his voice was steady and loud. "I'm not a scientist," he added.

"Who the hell cares? What were you doing up there, besides watching me?"

"I came here when the rain started, to get out of it."

"What was so damned funny?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why were you laughing?"

"Oh. Because you don't follow the rules of Batesian mimicry, and you should, you know."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm not a scientist."

"You said that already."

The man giggled, then recited, "It takes place in the same region and at the same season, according to Bates, and the mimicking species must not itself be protected, according to Bates, and it must be rarer than its model, Bates says, and it must differ from its own species by external characteristics clearly visible and able to create an illusion, Bates says that, too, and its mimicking characteristics should be only superficial and should produce no fundamental change in the species, Bates notes. He Worked with butterflies, you know."

"Are you nuts?"

"Yes, but I follow the rules."

"Move over into the light, where I can see you better."

The man did.

"Yeah, you got a nutty look about you. What's this Bates crap?"

"It's a thing certain creatures do for purposes of self-protection: Batesian mimicry. They make themselves look like something they're not, so nothing will bother them. Now, if you had been smart, you'd never have grown that beard, you'd wash your face and comb your hair, you'd garb yourself in a dark suit and a white shirt and a necktie, and you'd carry a briefcase. You'd make yourself look like everybody else. Then nobody'd bother you. Then you could do whatever you wanted without molestation. You'd resemble the protected species. You wouldn't be forced into danger."

"How do you know I've been forced into danger?"

"There is a look about you, a smell, a certain jumpiness . . ."

"And if I'd looked square, this wouldn't have happened?"

"Probably not."

"What's your excuse?"

The man laughed, seemed to relax.

"Do you hate scientists?"

"No more than anybody else."

"What if I were a scientist?"

"Nothing."

"Okay. I'm a scientist."

"So what?"

"They lumped us all together. I'm a biologist."

"I don't dig you."

"It was the physicists who did this to us," he gestured upward, outward...”and some chemists and mathematicians. Not the biologists."

"You mean the war?"

"Yes. No! I mean the world, the way it is now."

"I wasn't around when it happened. I don't know. Or care. What're you trying to say?"

"You shouldn't have blamed all the professors in all the disciplines for what happened."

"I didn't. I don't. I don't even know what happened. Not really. What _did_ happen?"

"War, that's all. Mad and devastating. Lots of bombs and rockets, with a result nobody had predicted: This!" He gestured toward the outside once more. "Then what happened? Why, the survivors visited the remaining universities that I knew of and killed the remaining professors, English, sociology, physics, it didn't matter what they taught, because the professors had obviously been responsible, because they had been professors. That's why Batesian mimicry means so much to me. They shot them, they tore them apart, they crucified them. But not me. No. Not me. I was them, the mob. So I lived. I'm Biology, Room six-oh-four, Benton Building." He laughed again.

"You mean you helped them when they killed your friends?"

"They weren't my friends. They were in different disciplines. I hardly knew them."

"But you helped?"

"Of course. That's why I'm still alive."

"So how's life?"

The man raised his hands to his face and began to dig his nails into his cheeks.

"I can't forget it," he finally said.

"So that's what your damned mimicry gets you, hung up by trying to be something else, too much. No thanks. I know what I am."

"What?"

"I'm me. I'm an Angel. I don't have to pretend to be anything else. If they don't like me, they can cut me down, if they're able to. So far, they haven't been able to. So screw 'em all! I don't dig this mimic bit. No thanks. Not at all. They can go to hell, every motherin' one of 'em!"

"A species can't make it that way."

"Screw species. I'm out to preserve me."

"That's the wrong attitude."

"Who says?"

"I don't know anymore." He continued to knead his cheeks, till the blood came forth and made his beard glis ten.

"Stop that! You're bugging me! Where do you live, anyway?"

"Noplace, everyplace, I wander. Wherever I try to stay, they drive me out after a time. It's not holy to be mad anymore."

"There are settlements around here? People?"

"Some, some . . ."

"Well, go mimic the people living in one."

"I can't. I'm mad."

"Shave off your beard and bathe, and wear a dark suit and a white shirt and necktie, and carry a briefcase...”

"They don't look that way anymore, I forgot. All that is changed . . ."

"Well, go look however the hell they look."

"They all have beards, and they're dirty, and they wear old clothes."

"Then you're already mimicking them. So am I."

"No!"

"What's the difference, then?"

"We're mad!"

"Leave me out of this."

"But it's true. Who else but a madman would be in this old barn in the middle of a storm that could become holocaust? A sane man would have a home, a safe place...”

"Okay, you've got a point. I'm nuts too. Cigarette?"

"Yes, please."

Tanner tossed him the pack with his left hand, and then the matches. He held the gun steady with his right.

Kanis lit a cigarette and returned the pack and the matches the way they had come.

Tanner lit his own carefully, not taking his eyes off the smaller man.

"I'm curious about your form of madness, though," said the man. "I've never seen a vehicle like that before. That's radiation armor, isn't it?"

"Yes. I'm driving it to Boston."

"Silly thing to do. It's dangerous."

"I know. But the plague is there, and I'm carrying Haffikine antiserum."