Paycheck (2003) (35 page)

Going to the closet of the small studio in which they had been broadcasting, he got his coat and began to put it on. A long trip lay ahead of them back to Earth from this remote spot, and he wanted to get started.

Peggy, following after him, said, ‘You’re not going back on the air
at all
? Not even to finish the program?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘But Unicephalon will be cutting back out again, and what’ll that leave? Just dead air. That’s not right, is it, Jim? Just to walk out like this … I can’t believe you’d do it, it’s not like you.’

He halted at the door of the studio. ‘You heard what it said. The instructions it handed out to me.’

‘Nobody leaves dead air going,’ Peggy said. ‘It’s a vacuum, Jim, the thing nature abhors.
And if you don’t fill it, someone else will
. Look, Unicephalon is going back off right now.’ She pointed at the TV monitor. The ribbon of words had ceased; once more the screen was dark, empty of motion and light. ‘It’s your responsibility,’ Peggy said, ‘and you know it.’

‘Are we back on the air?’ he asked Ed.

‘Yes. It’s definitely out of the circuit, at least for a while.’ Ed gestured toward the vacant stage on which the TV cameras and lights focussed. He said nothing more; he did not have to.

With his coat still on, Jim Briskin walked that way. Hands in his pockets he stepped back into the range of the cameras, smiled and said, ‘I think, beloved comrades, the interruption is over. For the time being, anyhow. So … let’s continue.’

The noise of canned applause - manipulated by Ed Fineberg - swelled up, and Jim Briskin raised his hands and signalled the nonexistent studio audience for silence.

‘Does any of you know a good lawyer?’ Jim-Jam asked caustically. ‘And if you do, phone us and tell us right away - before the FBI finally manages to reach us out here.’

*

In his bedroom at the White House, as Unicephalon’s message ended, Maximilian Fischer turned to his cousin Leon and said, ‘Well, I’m out of office.’

‘Yeah, Max,’ Leon said heavily. ‘I guess you are.’

‘And you, too,’ Max pointed out. ‘It’s going to be a clean sweep; you can count on that. Cancelled.’ He gritted his teeth. ‘That’s sort of insulting. It could have said
retired
.’

‘I guess that’s just its way of expressing itself,’ Leon said. ‘Don’t get upset, Max; remember your heart trouble. You still got the job of stand-by, and that’s the top stand-by position there is, Stand-by President of the United States, I want to remind you. And now you’ve got all this worry and effort off your back; you’re lucky.’

‘I wonder if I’m allowed to finish this meal,’ Max said, picking at the food in the tray before him. His appetite, now that he was retired, began almost at once to improve; he selected a chicken salad sandwich and took a big bite from it. ‘It’s still mine,’ he decided, his mouth full. ‘I still get to live here and eat regularly - right?’

‘Right,’ Leon agreed, his legal mind active. ‘That’s in the contract the union signed with Congress; remember back to that? We didn’t go out on strike for nothing.’

‘Those were the days,’ Max said. He finished the chicken salad sandwich and returned to the eggnog. It felt good not to have to make big decisions; he let out a long, heartfelt sigh and settled back into the pile of pillows propping him up.

But then he thought,
In some respects I sort of enjoyed making decisions. I mean, it was
— He searched for the thought.
It was different from being a stand-by or drawing unemployment. It had
—

Satisfaction
, he thought.
That’s what it gave me. Like I was accomplishing something
. He missed that already; he felt suddenly hollow, as if things had all at once become purposeless.

‘Leon,’ he said, ‘I could have gone on as President another whole month. And enjoyed the job. You know what I mean?’

‘Yeah, I guess I get your meaning,’ Leon mumbled.

‘No you don’t,’ Max said.

‘I’m trying, Max,’ his cousin said. ‘Honest.’

With bitterness, Max said, ‘I shouldn’t have had them go ahead and let those engineer-fellas patch up that Unicephalon; I should have buried the project, at least for six months.’

‘Too late to think about that now,’ Leon said.

Is it?
Max asked himself.
You know, something could
happen
to Unicephalon
40-
D
.
An accident
.

He pondered that as he ate a piece of green-apple pie with a wide slice of longhorn cheese. A number of persons whom he knew could pull off such tasks … and did so, now and then.

A big, nearly-fatal accident
, he thought.
Late some night, when everyone’s asleep and it’s just me and it awake here in the White House. I mean, let’s face it; the aliens showed us how
.

‘Look, Jim-Jam Briskin’s back on the air,’ Leon said, gesturing at the TV set. Sure enough, there was the famous, familiar red wig, and Briskin was saying something witty and yet profound, something that made one stop to ponder. ‘Hey listen,’ Leon said. ‘He’s poking fun at the FBI; can you imagine him doing that
now
? He’s not scared of anything.’

‘Don’t bother me,’ Max said. ‘I’m thinking.’ He reached over and carefully turned the sound of the TV set off.

For thoughts such as he was having he wanted no distractions.

Wearily, Addison Doug plodded up the long path of synthetic redwood rounds, step by step, his head down a little, moving as if he were in actual physical pain. The girl watched him, wanting to help him, hurt within her to see how worn and unhappy he was, but at the same time she rejoiced that he was there at all. On and on, toward her, without glancing up, going by feel … like he’s done this many times, she thought suddenly. Knows the way too well. Why?

‘Addi,’ she called, and ran toward him. ‘They said on the TV you were dead. All of you were killed!’

He paused, wiping back his dark hair, which was no longer long; just before the launch they had cropped it. But he had evidently forgotten. ‘You believe everything you see on TV?’ he said, and came on again, haltingly, but smiling now. And reaching up for her.

God, it felt good to hold him, and to have him clutch at her again, with more strength than she had expected. ‘I was going to find somebody else,’ she gasped. ‘To replace you.’

‘I’ll knock your head off if you do,’ he said. ‘Anyhow, that isn’t possible; nobody could replace me.’

‘But what about the implosion?’ she said. ‘On reentry; they said—’

‘I forget,’ Addison said, in the tone he used when he meant, I’m not going to discuss it. The tone had always angered her before, but not now. This time she sensed how awful the memory was. ‘I’m going to stay at your place a couple of days,’ he said, as together they moved up the path toward the open front door of the tilted A-frame house. ‘If that’s okay. And Benz and Crayne will be joining me, later on; maybe even as soon as tonight. We’ve got a lot to talk over and figure out.’

‘Then all three of you survived.’ She gazed up into his careworn face. ‘Everything they said on TV …’ She understood, then. Or believed she did. ‘It was a cover story. For - political purposes, to fool the Russians. Right? I mean, the Soviet Union’ll think the launch was a failure because on reentry—’

‘No,’ he said. ‘A chrononaut will be joining us, most likely. To help figure out what happened. General Toad said one of them is already on his way here; they got clearance already. Because of the gravity of the situation.’

‘Jesus,’ the girl said, stricken. ‘Then who’s the cover story for?’

‘Let’s have something to drink,’ Addison said. ‘And then I’ll outline it all for you.’

‘Only thing I’ve got at the moment is California brandy.’

Addison Doug said, ‘I’d drink anything right now, the way I feel.’ He dropped to the couch, leaned back, and sighed a ragged, distressed sigh, as the girl hurriedly began fixing both of them a drink.

The FM-radio in the car yammered, ‘… grieves at the stricken turn of events precipitating out of an unheralded …’

‘Official nonsense babble,’ Crayne said, shutting off the radio. He and Benz were having trouble finding the house, having been there only once before. It struck Crayne that this was somewhat informal a way of convening a conference of this importance, meeting at Addison’s chick’s pad out here in the boondocks of Ojai. On the other hand, they wouldn’t be pestered by the curious. And they probably didn’t have much time. But that was hard to say; about that no one knew for sure.

The hills on both sides of the road had once been forests, Crayne observed. Now housing tracts and their melted, irregular, plastic roads marred every rise in sight. ‘I’ll bet this was nice once,’ he said to Benz, who was driving.

‘The Los Padres National Forest is near here,’ Benz said. ‘I got lost in there when I was eight. For hours I was sure a rattler would get me. Every stick was a snake.’

‘The rattler’s got you now,’ Crayne said.

‘All of us,’ Benz said.

‘You know,’ Crayne said, ‘it’s a hell of an experience to be dead.’

‘Speak for yourself.’

‘But technically—’

‘If you listen to the radio and TV.’ Benz turned toward him, his big gnome face bleak with admonishing sternness. ‘We’re no more dead than anyone else on the planet. The difference for us is that our death date is in the past, whereas everyone else’s is set somewhere at an uncertain time in the future. Actually, some people have it pretty damn well set, like people in cancer wards; they’re as certain as we are. More so. For example, how long can we stay here before we go back? We have a margin, a latitude that a terminal cancer victim doesn’t have.’

Crayne said cheerfully, ‘The next thing you’ll be telling us to cheer us up is that we’re in no pain.’

‘Addi is. I watched him lurch off earlier today. He’s got it psychosomatically - made it into a physical complaint. Like God’s kneeling on his neck; you know, carrying a muchtoo-great burden that’s unfair, only he won’t complain out loud … just points now and then at the nail hole in his hand.’ He grinned.

‘Addi has got more to live for than we do.’

‘Everyman has more to live for than any other man. I don’t have a cute chick to sleep with, but I’d like to see the semis rolling along Riverside Freeway at sunset a few more times. It’s not what you have to live for; it’s that you want to live to see it, to be there - that’s what is so damn sad.’

They rode on in silence.

*

In the quiet living room of the girl’s house the three tempunauts sat around smoking, taking it easy; Addison Doug thought to himself that the girl looked unusually foxy and desirable in her stretched-tight white sweater and micro-skirt and he wished, wistfully, that she looked a little less interesting. He could not really afford to get embroiled in such stuff, at this point. He was too tired.

‘Does she know,’ Benz said, indicating the girl, ‘what this is all about? I mean, can we talk openly? It won’t wipe her out?’

‘I haven’t explained it to her yet,’ Addison said.

‘You goddam well better,’ Crayne said.

‘What is it?’ the girl said, stricken, sitting upright with one hand directly between her breasts. As if clutching at a religious artifact that isn’t there, Addison thought.

‘We got snuffed on reentry,’ Benz said. He was, really, the cruelest of the three. Or at least the most blunt. ‘You see, Miss …’

‘Hawkins,’ the girl whispered.

‘Glad to meet you, Miss Hawkins.’ Benz surveyed her in his cold, lazy fashion. ‘You have a first name?’

‘Merry Lou.’

‘Okay, Merry Lou,’ Benz said. To the other two men he observed, ‘Sounds like the name a waitress has stitched on her blouse. Merry Lou’s my name and I’ll be serving you dinner and breakfast and lunch and dinner and breakfast for the next few days or however long it is before you all give up and go back to your own time; that’ll be fifty-three dollars and eight cents, please, not including tip And I hope y’all never come back, y’hear?’ His voice had begun to shake; his cigarette, too. ‘Sorry, Miss Hawkins,’ he said then. ‘We’re all screwed up by the implosion at reentry. As soon as we got here in ETA we learned about it. We’ve known longer than anyone else; we knew as soon as we hit Emergence Time.’

‘But there’s nothing we could do,’ Crayne said.

‘There’s nothing anyone can do,’ Addison said to her, and put his arm around her. It felt like a deja vu thing but then it hit him. We’re in a closed time loop, he thought, we keep going through this again and again, trying to solve the reentry problem, each time imagining it’s the first time, the only time … and never succeeding. Which attempt is this? Maybe the millionth; we have sat here a million times, raking the same facts over and over again and getting nowhere. He felt bone-weary, thinking that. And he felt a sort of vast philosophical hate toward all other men, who did not have this enigma to deal with. We all go to one place, he thought, as the Bible says. But … for the three of us, we have been there already. Are lying there now. So it’s wrong to ask us to stand around on the surface of Earth afterward and argue and worry about it and try to figure out what malfunctioned. That should be, rightly, for our heirs to do. We’ve had enough already.