Inside a Silver Box (26 page)

“Damn, they sound stupid,” the young man said.

“In the end, the world is only zeroes and ones,” Lorraine said in answer.

“What’s that got to do with how I’m hurtin’?”

“It means that God is as petty as a jealous lover.”

*   *   *

“D
O YOU FEEL
my hegemony?” Clavell asked his ex-warden.

“Yes. You are now the master of all I am,” the Silver Box replied.

“You do not kowtow to my power, but you will,” Nontee gloated. “Together we will start with this adopted planet of yours. We will take every life—every fish and fowl and ape—and cause their souls such pain. And then, just when they are about to escape the mortal coil, we will slowly, inexorably drain the immortality of their spirits.”

“No,” the Silver Box said with both sadness and certainty.

Ronnie felt the knife pulled out of his back.

Lorraine breathed in deeply, feeling release that she had never imagined possible.

“What happened?” Ronnie asked.

“We are like bugs to the Silver Box,” Lorraine said. “He just let us go.”

“What do you mean no?” Clavell demanded.

“You are now my master, as you say,” the insect said, still in its pleading posture. “Those long years you spent, you invented the key to control me. Now I am nothing but your slave.”

“Then I have succeeded,” Clavell/Nontee said, “not failed.”

“You have commandeered a sinking ship, raped a diseased corpse,” the Silver Box said simply. “You have stolen the food of a starving man, only to find that it is poison.”

Far off in the alien sky, an explosion rocked some galaxy.

“What is that?” Nontee asked.

“I could not destroy you,” the Silver Box said almost kindly. “That is why I kept you alive, aware. It was the deep bond between us that kept me from eradicating your foul existence. I was unable to attain my goal because we were, at the base of things, one.

“But I learned here from my friends that even though I couldn’t kill you, I might still destroy myself.”

“No,” Clavell now said.

“Yes. And with your hand in my body, you too will cease to exist. On this plane, Ragnarök is the story of the final battle between the gods. That is what we are now experiencing, Nontee. You and Inglo and millions of others of the Laz who refused to die now have bonded with my self-decimation. I welcome death and your addition to my salvation.”

The protective atmosphere above them disappeared and the ground beneath Ronnie and Lorraine exploded upward. The last thing Ronnie saw was giant Clavell’s shoulders jerking wildly in a vain attempt to pull his hand out of a long bug’s metallic body while the stars above his head exploded one by one.

FORTY-TWO

I
T WAS LONG
after midnight in Central Park. Bruised, bloodied, and in charred tatters from fire and flying shards of stone, Lorraine and Ronnie lay side by side, unconscious, dying.

They were there in the bushes, no more than a foot between them, bleeding and expiring from a disaster unimaginable by most human beings.

A muscle convulsion caused Lorraine to turn in her last moment, and her right hand brushed against Ronnie’s left elbow. Slowly the wounds, contusions, and internal injuries began to heal themselves. The broken bones and malfunctioning organs began repairing themselves. Breath returned and deepened.

Two hours passed.

Ronnie opened his eyes first. He sat up and pulled Lorraine to him.

She smiled and put her fingers to his cheek. “God is dead,” she said.

“Him and his father too,” Ronnie added.

“How did we survive?”

“Because we were supposed to,” Ronnie said, “or at least it was a chance he took.”

“So you think we have to do it?”

“At least we got to try.”

“But how? There’s not enough to either one of us.”

“Then let’s dig our hands in the dirt and do it that way, the old way that maybe never was.”

*   *   *

O
N THEIR KNEES
facing each other, Lorraine and Ronnie clasped hands and then speared them into the ground much as Clavell had done to the duplicitous Ti-ti. At first they felt nothing. But then the earthworms and roots, bacteria and underground voles, moles and other rodents allowed their life force to be sucked up into the vortex created by the enemies-turned-friends.

The ground beneath them turned hot and a mound of earth grew beneath their knees. Slowly a head and then a slender pair of shoulders rose up out of the ground. A tall black man who was arisen from both the minds and the blood of Lorraine and Ronnie.

Naked and somewhat ageless, UTB-Claude stood between them. He was weak and they exhausted. There was a smile among them; Ronnie saw that Claude’s eyes were a metallic white like platinum and then they were all unconscious, lying on the turned-up earth that was the womb for the last vestige of the Silver Box.

*   *   *

W
HEN THE POLICE
came the next morning and rousted the trio, there was no resistance from them. As a matter of fact, they were all smiling and officers wrapped blankets over their shoulders.

There were six officers for the three naked and near-naked trespassers.

“These dudes jumped us,” Ronnie said as handcuffs were put on him. “Clavell, Nontee, and this guy callin’ himself Inglo. They beat our ass an’ stripped us. Don’t ask me why.”

“That’s right,” Lorraine said. “I think they were mad that we were together.”

“What about you?” a caramel-colored cop asked the tall black man who didn’t have a stitch of clothing. There was dirt in the tall black man’s hair and he had eyes of shining white.

“What about me?”

“Were you attacked?”

“Hell yeah, I was. And I got a lawyer too. His name is Roland Gideon.”

Ronnie Bottoms laughed out loud, and Lorraine breathed a sigh of relief.

ALSO BY WALTER MOSLEY

LEONID McGILL MYSTERIES

All I Did Was Shoot My Man

When the Thrill Is Gone

Known to Evil

The Long Fall

EASY RAWLINS MYSTERIES

Rose Gold

Little Green

Blonde Faith

Cinnamon Kiss

Little Scarlet

Six Easy Pieces

Bad Boy Brawly Brown

A Little Yellow Dog

Black Betty

Gone Fishin’

White Butterfly

A Red Death

Devil in a Blue Dress

OTHER FICTION

Debbie Doesn’t Do It Anymore

The Tempest Tales

Diablerie

Killing Johnny Fry

The Gift of Fire/On the Head of a Pin

Merge/Disciple

Stepping Stone/Love Machine

The Man in My Basement

Fear of the Dark

Fortunate Son

The Wave

Fear Itself

Futureland

Fearless Jones

Walkin’ the Dog

Blue Light

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

RL’s Dream

47

The Right Mistake

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

NONFICTION

Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation

This Year You Write Your Novel

What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace

Life Out of Context

Workin’ on the Chain Gang

PLAYS

The Fall of Heaven

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

WALTER MOSLEY is one of the most versatile and admired writers in America today. He is the author of more than thirty-four critically acclaimed books, including the major bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. Mosley’s short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in
The New York Times Magazine
and
The Nation
. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy, and PEN American Center’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.

www.waltermosley.com

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

INSIDE A SILVER BOX

Copyright © 2015 by Walter Mosley

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Greg Ruth

Cover design by Peter Lutjen

A Tor Book

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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-7653-7521-6 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4668-5844-2 (e-book)

e-ISBN 9781466858442

First Edition: January 2015