Skeletons (56 page)

Heh-heh
.

"Dammit, Garber, come in!" the radio squawks, forgoing the discreet beep for Cap'n Bob's jet-noise-impregnated shout.

I reach beneath my shirt to pull the radio out, jam my finger into the call button.

"Oh, yeah, you f—"

My leg collapses beneath me, and with a grunt I fall forward, sliding over the lip of the rocks and over the waterfall as the Roger-radar gives the loudest blast I've ever heard.

I actually watch myself go over, feeling that cool spray on my face. I only realize about three quarters of the way down, as the rocky surface rises up to me, what's happened and what's about to happen.

I give myself just enough time to get off a good loud scream.

"
Fuuuuuuuuuuu
... !"

Then I hit the rocks, hard, headfirst, splat city right in the center of a big flat one.

I'm dead as a doornail for about five seconds, like a fade-out in a movie.

And then . . .

I'm back
!

Heeeeeeere's
Roger!

What was all the fuss about. Hey, these bones aren't bad. I honestly can't say I feel much different. One thing I do notice, as I make myself comfortable on my flat rock, is that ol' Pete was right, my leg was broken, a nice straight fracture you can see right below the shin. Oh, well. Works just fine now.

I have a sudden horrible thought, reach a shaking boner hand into my pocket

Hallelujah! My stash is still safe.

I cut a nice line right there on the rock and
snorkle
it up.

Ahhh
.

The radio, still strapped to my side and having been saved from smashing when the rest of my body cushioned its collision, is squawking again. Then Cap'n Bob's voice is shouting, "Goddammit, Garber! Come in, soldier!"

I pull it out. I hesitate a moment before pushing the return-call button. I look up at the top of the waterfall, the ledge from where I just made my swan dive.

I shake my head, wondering what the hell I was doing up there in the first place.

"Shit, man, I must have been crazy."

What are you going to do
?

That's an easy one, bub.

Laughing, the coke hitting my head just as I hit the call button on the radio, I cut off Cap'n Bob's loud shouting to say, feeling more like ol'
Rog
than ever, "Hey babies, Mr. and Mrs. are ready for the picking! Ol'
Rog
is in the Dodge! It's party time! We're talking last-human
souffle
! Do it! I'm ready, Freddie! Wipeout time! Ya-
hoo
!”

"COME AND SQUASH THESE SUCKERS FLAT!"

My dreams used to scare Mary. I miss her, sometimes terribly. I know she was a bother with her frets and all, but she was what I had, and as the saying goes, "You don't miss your water till the well is dry."

Well, I'm afraid my well is pretty much bone-dry, these days. My brooding has gotten completely out of hand, to the point where it even bothers me. That's a very analytical thing to say, I know, but I must confess that much of my interest and pleasure these last weeks has come from my study of the so-called science of the mind. Though I can't say I hold much with this Freud fellow, whom I met a few weeks ago in Washington, I think he was on the right track.

Seems I'm what's called a manic-depressive. Heck, if that's what they call a brooder, then I'm guilty. One of the doctors here, a man named Linus Pauling, quite well-known in his own right, has suggested on the television that I be given some sort of drug to cheer me up. I called that doctor on the phone and told him that there was no pill made that could cheer up my problem.

"The only pill," I said, "is the end of this war."

"But Mr. President," he said, "the war is going well!"

"Wars never go well," I answered. And then I couldn't resist, and repeated one of the most comical sayings I've heard, from an American baseball player named Yogi Berra who reminds me of one of my favorite wits, Thomas Hood: "It ain't over, Mr. Pauling, till it's over."

Fact is, it is almost over. But I find the brood upon me greater than ever. Because my doubts are still upon me. We have turned nearly every human on earth, and yet I don't feel that this great task is over. I feel that this is only the second act of the play.

"Nonsense," Stanton has said to me. Thank the Almighty for Stanton, who has proved to be a
needfully
ruthless secretary of war. Even better at it than he was the first time. Whenever I have wavered, he was there, hard as a rock, pushing forward. "Do we prefer a state of perpetual civil war?" he is fond of saying, using my own most persuasive argument. "Is there an alternative?"

No, I must say, there still does seem to be no alternative. Which is why Stanton has so vigorously opposed my acting on my dream.

"Poppycock!" he roared at me, when I first proposed the idea. 'Turn them all, and as soon as possible! Without that there can be no unity!"

"And yet," I countered, "these dreams have not been mine alone. We have the testimony of many humans who say the vision of this young human girl has guided them.

"Guided them to what?" Stanton stormed around the Oval Office, bristling with rage, stroking his beard. He looked ready to hit someone, perhaps me.

"You look like the bear who can't get at the honey pot," I said, not being able to resist smiling at his antics.

"I repeat," he said, "guided to what? To our embrace! All of them have been turned. Even if this . . . girl exists, what of it? I say she, too, must be turned. And then this conflict will end!"

"I agree with you," I said firmly, "but I would like to do it in my own fashion."

"By sending this fool . . ." He made a quite comical impression of Mr. Garber's strange hair, pulling his own hair up from the top of his head so that it stood up. 'This human fool . . ."

"I feel it is right."

"But—"

"In my dream I meet this woman, the last of all humanity, and the man with her."

"And then?"

"I don't know. I only know that it is significant. Don't you remember the dream I had before each victory in the other war? The phantom ship approaching the indistinct shore? It proved significant, did it not?"

"If I remember correctly, you had it the night before your assassination," he responded bluntly. He frowned. 'The longer we wait . . ."

At that moment Eddie and Willie burst in, playing human and skeleton. Eddie chased Willie around my desk, shouting, "Take that, you rascal, take that . . ."

Eddie stopped a moment to salute Stanton. "Lieutenant Lincoln reporting, sir!"

I looked up at Stanton, smiled, and shrugged. "Mr. President, you are impossible."

Stanton stormed out, muttering, the matter settled.

And so as the weeks went on, and early winter passed into late winter, and the air force used its marvelous machine to find the rest of humanity and search for the girl, my dreams became more distinct and numerous. Always they were the same. I was to meet the young woman and her young man on an island. A warm feeling always embraced me in the dream when I did this. And then I would wake up.

Around the world a measure of stability had arrived along with this turning of the last vestiges of humanity. But along with it came an uncertainty, a waiting. It was as if the whole of our skeletal race were holding its breath. Even Stanton, who pooh-poohed the idea, had to admit that though he still felt I was wrong, he, too, felt an edginess about the future.

One day, as early March snow was melting outside my office window and the cherry blossoms of Washington were trying to make themselves bloom, I finally discovered the source of this edginess. Down across the grounds I could see Willie being led on his beloved pony, gesturing to the Secret Service man who led the horse to make it clop faster. Behind me I heard a sound. I swiveled in my chair to see Eddie enter the room, a picture book dangling in one hand.

"Will you read to me, sir?" he said, saluting.

"I certainly will, Lieutenant," I said, dropping my long leg from the arm of the chair and making room on my lap.

Eddie picked up his book and sat. But I noticed a rather forlorn look about him.

"Something got its stinger in you, Lieutenant?" I said.

He shrugged.

"You miss your mother?"

"Some."

"Something more than that?"

Hanging his head, he nodded.

"Hmm, what could it be?"

Again he shrugged.

"I see. That reminds me of the man who lost his tongue—ever hear of him?"

I detected interest, so I continued, cuddling the boy in a more comfortable position on my lap.

"I thought this might be your kind of yarn. Seems there was once this man who heard one man say to another, 'Cat got your tongue?' He resolved to see what it was all about. So the dang fool went and got himself a cat, and an ax. He sat the cat down, then laid his tongue out nice and neat on the top of a tree stump, and whacked it right off!

"Well, this started him hollering plenty, and hopping up and down. Only no one could hear him! And to add insult to injury, the cat ran away with his tongue!

"He says to himself, 'Now I know what that man was talking about, and it's not a pleasant thing!'

"So he chased down the cat, wrestled his tongue away from it, and ran to the doctor, who sewed it back on. Only that doctor was a bit nearsighted, and had never sewn a tongue on anybody before, and put it on upside down!

"Ever after, that man talked backward when he talked at all!"

Eddie looked up at me, skeptical, but he was smiling, and that was what I wanted.

"Now, want to tell me what's eating you, backward or forward?"

He hung his head and nodded. "I want to know where we go."

"What's that?"

"I want to know where we go when we . . . go.”

“Ah." Suddenly I got his drift. "You mean, where did mother go?"

He nodded. "And where did we go . . . that first time."

"I see." I reached up to scratch my beard. "Now that, Lieutenant, is about the toughest one of all."

His eyes were wide and direct as only, I've found, a child's can be. "Why?"

"Well, some of these scientist fellows, they think maybe just this cloud we're in picked up some—what did they call it?—genetic ghost from traces of our bones left where we were interred, and that these gene particles were then sprung up into us. I don't hold with that, myself. The way I figure it, we must have come from someplace to get back to here. Now, if that's true, that's pretty good news, because it means that no matter what, we've got it made."

"You mean we'll see Mother again?"

I scratched my chin, hard. "Now, that one's what I like to think of as a secret. I can't recollect this other place we must have been myself, and I have yet to meet anybody with any sense who can, but I have to believe that if it's there, it must be all right. I think we'd remember if it wasn't, and wouldn't be in any hurry to get back." I cocked an eye down at him. "What do you think about it?"

My little son put his head to my breast, almost breaking my heart, and I felt him tremble. "I'm scared, Father."

"Why, you rascal, there's nothing to be frightened about!"

"But I am. I heard you talking to those men about the spaceman you were sending to find out what happens when the earth comes out of the cloud. You said you didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't like going that ... other time. I remember getting sick, and moaning . . ."

Suddenly my little boy was blubbering, holding me tighter than a barnacle on a ship. And I, president of the United States, so-called hero for prosecuting a successful war and stabilizing my country and most of the world, felt as helpless as I ever had, unable to tell a little boy that everything in the world was all right.

I let him cry a bit. To tell the truth I felt like blubbering myself. Then I held Eddie out from me, just a little sternly, and said, looking into his eyes, "Lieutenant, your papa is on the case. You believe that, don't you?"

He wiped away tears and nodded.

"And you believe that if I can't handle it, nobody can, right?"

"Y-y-yes, Papa."

"Well, that's settled, then, isn't it?"

"Yes, Papa."

"Good. Then let's get down to important business." I took up the book he had brought with him, something by this whimsical fellow Dr. Seuss, and began to read from it, with great flourishes at the dramatic and comical parts. When Eddie left, it was as if nothing had ever bothered him. He marched out like a good little soldier to join his brother, whom he fought lustily with over some toy or other not an hour after we had had our very serious little talk, which I, of course, had not forgotten.

Not a week after this incident Stanton told me that the search for the young woman in my dreams was concentrated now in an area of Alaska, and that our space experiment was about to come off. He suggested that I should go to California to be ready for both events.