Mr. X (58 page)

A dry male voice said, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Anscombe. You will be taken care of soon enough.”

Robert and Ned stared into their identical faces and seemed to glide toward each other without any sort of conscious movement. Ned’s being trembled with the awareness that his brother’s survival, and in some sense his own, depended upon an extraordinary act of surrender.

They heard the woman shout,
Shit, I really am in hell, only the son of a bitch isn’t RED, it’s BLUE!

Gliding toward Robert, Ned experienced a new sort of terror, which was focused on the awareness that he was on the threshold of a change that he could neither control nor foresee. The terror became exquisite when he realized that part of his being was already stretching out its arms in yearning.

*  *  *

A rational, self-protective portion of Robert also welcomed the coming mystery, for it recognized a chance of survival. The part of Robert that was chaotic and irrational resisted in a terror greater than Ned’s. He felt despair and revulsion at having been swindled into a destructive bargain.

Irresistibly, Robert and Ned sailed toward each other, met, and melted together, each with his own fears, doubts, and resentments, and for a moment their psyches tangled and rebelled, one aghast at the other’s depth of rage and violence, the other repelled by what seemed the unbearable narrowness and smallness of his confinement, therefore burning to
mutiny
, to
lay waste—

No sooner than registered, this ambivalence dissolved into a resolution and harmony, a wholeness shot through with the perception of an even greater, more roomy wholeness, equal to the possession of a kind of magnificence, withheld from them only by the fact of Ned’s actual
absence
. Such depth of personal surrender accompanied this sense of possibility that both instantly drew back, but in one mind and body they soared together through the kitchen wall with what their Ned-half experienced from his inextricable other self as an acknowledgment of a compounding sweetness and satisfaction equal to his own.

Together they fled into the fir-scented night, and their Roberthalf seized control and sped them away. Ned felt as though pedaling uphill on a leaden bicycle, then as though swimming underwater against a strong current. His muscles ached, his lungs strained for oxygen. Mile after blurry mile slipped by. With no transition, they came to rest in a vacant lot where Queen Anne’s lace trembled about them. Robert peeled him off like a dirty shirt. Millions of stars gleamed down from the night sky.
It’s too much
, Ned thought,
way too much
.

“Where are we?”

“I’m somewhere in Wisconsin,” Robert said. “You’re in Edgerton, with Mom.”

Ned pulled his knees to his chest as a spike drove into his head.

80

“And I was you,” said Robert. “Long enough to get us out of Boulder, anyhow.”

“I can’t believe I forgot what we did,” I said. “I saved your life.”

“I’ve saved yours a couple of times,” Robert said. “Can you stay alive until our birthday? I can’t protect you every minute of the day.”

“We have more to talk about,” I said, but he was gone.

81
Mr.X

O You Hoverers, You Smoke Ravening from the Cannon, Your Son is wondering if in Your Triumphant Millennium what used to be called “the servant problem” still exists. Do You, in Your Exalted Realms, employ the services of humbler beings, no doubt enslaved, no doubt from Conquered Territories? If so, You know what I’m talking about. A slave is no different from a servant, except for being an even greater responsibility. The patron saint of servants is Judas. My earthly parents suffered the depredations of disloyal maids and housekeepers, and I, too, have had my Judases, the first of them one Clothhead Spelvin, whose betrayal I answered with a summary visit to his jail cell. And now, that twitchy collection of street-sweepings, Frenchy La Chapelle, has failed me.