Terraplane (15 page)

"He must be moneyed full," said Jake, totaling bounty.

"All's for daily use," I said. "Thriftshop bound. Fifty old dollars'd
buy all, I'd hazard. It only lends wealth's impress."

Jake snorted, unconvinced. The particular history armymen soaked up served as background for strategy's sake; of Khe Sanh,
Passchendaele and Blenheim I could describe each assault, each
retreat, every bullet shot. But as to when pens first came already
inked, when refrigerators began defrosting themselves, when
TVCs learned to speak, I held but little notion. I assumed Jake
knew history so well as any American; that is, knew that since he
was born, things had changed-though in Jake'' case I doubt that
they had.

"How's his action trustable?" Jake asked, nodding towards the
office's shut door. "How low's his line dip?"

"They're doctoring," I said. "Calm yourself."

"Witchdoctoring," said Jake. "What if he terms inadvertent? Or
advertent?"

"He won't," I said. `All differs here. Keep that minded, Jake,
trust's essentialled. You vizzed the outside-"

"Calcutta," said Jake. "World within world and nothing more.
We'll compensate fine."

"But not sole," I said. "He'll have to be backgrounded. I see no
other way-"

"Betrayal awaits," he said. "Think twice."

1 shook my head. "Five times I've thought," I said. "All's risked
inescapably in whatever situation. His suspicions have grown since
first meet. We've attracted, that's the reason he's not let us drop."

"Prep yourself to action once he shows untrue," said Jake, wording me to do to Doc what I'd readied to do to him, when and if
time came; I nearly laughed, though I knew he gave truth. Still, we
had to take trust upon its deformed face. "What's ragged?" he
asked, eyeing tabled nags and papers.

"Let's input," I said. "We need all info availabled. How's the
arm?"

"Attached," he muttered. Seating ourselves in tufted leather
chairs as if to hear chamber music, we gleaned the past's pages.
Life's sheets photoed the known-La Guardia, Goering, Einstein-and unknown: Brenda Frazier, Leverett Saltonstall, Jerusalem's Grand Mufti. Enormous space was devoted to collegiate
goldfish eating.

"She'd desire," said Jake, flashing Liberty's cover, whereupon the Big Boy, agin as we'd seen his image only that morning past,
looked out at his American buyers. He ripped it free, folded and
pocketed it. Dime Mystery's pages held a Sherlock Holmes tale by
Conan Doyle, a reprint, it noted. Having never read the stories,
only having seen the vids, I'd never heard of "The Sumatran Rat."

"Is radium silk irradiated?" Jake asked.

"Undoubted," I said, not knowing. "Why?"

"Fools," he said, showing me a Collier's ad. "They use it in
shirts." Selling for three dollars-old dollars-per, they seemed a
bargain for the cancers surely obtained. Such folly amazed, but
then, as spoken, these were innocents' times. I tossed aside two
Superman comic books, and didn't even examine what appeared
as a sci-fi mag. Inpiled were two papers, the New York Age and the
Daily Mirror.

" `Back to Africa-Is the Time Right?' " I said, reading aloud
the Age's head.

"Africa?" said Jake. "Everyone there's dead."

"Not entirely." The article editorialized; Jake interrupted before
I might read what it thought about what.

"What's this garble tell?" he asked, showing the head on the
Mirror: G-MEN CLIP HOMER'S KANSAS SPREE.

"Unknown," I said; seeing who was photoed below, I felt my
neck hair rise. "Look there. He's alive now " There in gray fuzz and
white blur Hitler showed; not merely alive but having only begun,
the one who ultimately made this world into ours, poised at
upheaval's age. We were-I was-so overfamiliared with societal
evil that the recognition of personal evil shocked as I'd not been in
years.

"Hey," cried Wanda. "Digger O'Dell and Dug-up. Come on in."

Sharp alcohol scent cleared my head as we entered the exam
room, enabling me to feel my pain more easily. Oktobriana lay
bundled beneath a blanket; damp cloth cooled her brow With
fever-bright eyes she followed Jake's step, his careful move.

"Let's have a look at that shoulder, Jake," said Doc, putting arm
on him waistround, as if to assist his walk. "You wear a brace?"

Before seating himself Jake reached undercoat, slipped from its
folds his chainsaw, handing it across, as if suspecting confiscation awaited. Doc must have brushed its ignition, or safety, or both; as
he touched it the blade roared free, doubling in length. He
dropped it floorways, where it sliced in deep before Jake reached
down and cut it.

"Careful," he said. For the moment the music below stopped. A
blue glass jar topful with pennies sat atop folders nearby; such an
odd accoutrement for a doctor's office, I thought.

"Goddamn, Jake," said Doc, his face free of all color but skin's.
"What else you got under there?" Stripping coat, jacket and vest,
keeping shirtsleeved, Jake counted out his ordnance's inventory,
laying down his chuks, chain and trunch; shiny razored knucks; his
powerdrill and select bits; the Omsk, retrieved the evening past.
With smooth hand he drew Skuratov's Shrogin; Doc eyed its digital
display.

"This ain't no tommy gun," said Doc, tabling it carefully, to
avoid accident. "Why're you packin' so much heat, Jake?" Doc
asked, counting Jake's probes, stickers and flicks.

"I'in a security consultant."

"Pretty damn secure," said Doc, blading Jake's primary switch,
used as silverware the night before. "Jacket still weighs a ton.
What's it made of? Looks like linen-"

"There's a Krylar underlay," Jake noted. Wanda leaned down to
remove his shirt.

"These buttons don't hook into anything," she said.

"Velcro. Just pull. Krylar deflects small projectiles."

"Not enough of 'em," said Doc, seeing Jake's torso revealed in
high relief, scar's webbing woven from neck to waist. "Get blown
up and sewn back together?" he laughed.

"This alone," said Jake, lifting his left leg as if to spray. In the
stash there tabled showed neither the tracker nor his pocket-player;
somewhere still enclosed jacketways, too, I knew, remained a
thirty-meter line in event a climb essentialled. Doc pounced only
on those goods holding obvious harm. Kneeling, he unlocked one
of several cabinet doors, gleaming with baked-white glaze. Gathering Jake's toys he pushed all within and relocked, pocketing the key.
Jake looked on, surprisingly calm. "Those are necessaries," he
said.

"I'll give 'em back when you leave," Doc said. "Don't feel too
comfortable so close to an armory. Meantime they can just stay
right there. "

"Are you all right, Jake?" Oktobriana asked, her voice soft and
unexpected; though openeyed I thought her under, so deathlike
she lay.

"I think he'll be just fine," said Doc. "Seems a pretty tough bird.
How're you feelin', miss?"

"Sick," she said. She looked at Jake as one starving.

"Think you just picked up a bug, that's all. Considering what
you been through you're coming out ahead. Jake, you say this
shoulder was dislocated-"

"Was," said Jake, looking over his blue-black joint, the lasting
swell.

"I don't know," said Doc, running hands along Jake's ridges and
holes and bumps. "Nothing displaced. No ribs broke. You still
oughta be pretty racked up-"

"Diodin lasts twelve hours," Jake said. "By then it'll have settled. "

"What is that? I don't know it. "

"A painsucker," said Jake. "I'm no pusher, I can't describe. It was
in the plane's kit."

"And she told me she had Extamyl. That's the same sort of
thing?"

"I told you," she said. "Synthetic morphia derivative restructured to remove addictive potential."

Doc stared on as if he'd OD'ed on the stuff she described. "Let's
just bandage you up then," he said. "Wanda, give me an Ace-"

"Sitting there in front of you," she said. He applied it, wrapping
Jake's shoulder tight. Oktobriana's look fixed Jake without letup; her
gaze held fear, fear that if her eyes shut again but once, upon
reopening she would look upon nothing but an absence, a loved
one gone, nevermore seen, stealing away all in the flight. Windowways came a sudden shout. "Doc!"

"Yeah," Doc yelled back. "Who's that? Bill?"

"Up awful late, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I'm burning the midnight oil. How you doing, Bill?"

"Sent but not spent," the unseen spoke. "Really hot downstairs."

"I hear 'em."

"Catch you on the fly." Then, again, silence. Doe finished
wrapping Jake.

"That'll be all right. Looks like ever' one of you got bit raw by
those skeets. I got some medicated lotion, you can rub it on. All
right, Luther, let's check you out. "

Bearing no body trauma, I kept clothed. Doc alcoholed a cot-
tonball and painted my headwounds with pain. "Turn this way," he
said. "Hell, inch or two deeper, you wouldn't have much ear left.
Somebody try to bite it off?"

"I was cuffslung," I said. "Bashed and doublebashed. Jake preserved."

"Cuffslung," Wanda repeated. "You mean with handcuffs?"

"Exact. "

"What the hell are you all? Convicts or what?" Her voice rose,
foreboding more than it had. "Norman, you bringing in gangsters
now? '16 our home?"

"Be quiet, Wanda," Doc said, matching her pitch, swiping one
of my cuts so viciously I thought his aim might be to deepen, not
cleanse. "They're not gangsters. I thought that at first, but on the
one hand they seem too smart to be crooks-"

"We've no criminal orientation," I said, keen to assure.

"-on the other hand they're too damn dumb," he concluded.
"Nothing but babes in the woods. Telling me they're Americans-"

"We are," I said.

"Not me," Oktobriana noted.

"Luther never seen a flyer, he says." With a bandagelength he
affixed gauze to my head. "Didn't even know what one was."

"Get out of here," said Wanda. "You shittin' me?"

"I'll tell the world," said Doe. "I'm wondering if they might not
be spies. What do you think?"

"Spies?"

"Hell, yes, spies. Piss-poor spies at that. Crashing in some kinda
plane, hear you tell it. Act like you don't know your ass from a hole
in the ground to the point I don't think you do. Don't speak
English worth a damn-"

"We word perfect," said Jake. "Your dialect hinders."

"Listen to him. Look, there's been a lot of talk lately about spies.
Nazi subs coming up off Long Island ever' night. Hanging out
down by the waterfront. Yorkville's full of Germans and probably
half of 'em are into something. If you all were krauts it wouldn't
surprise me-

"Krauts," I said. "What's meant?"

His face beamed with exasperation. "Germans."

e?

"Whitest nigger I ever saw," murmured Wanda, lighting a cigarette with a scratch match pulled from a small paper box; these
people smoked like Russians, keen for dragonsbreath.

"But I don't think that holds up either," said Doc. "Too damn
crazy to be spies, too. What the hell are you, man? Where're you
from? You going to spill the beans or am I just gonna have to boot
your asses out on the street?"

Still, we'd snared his interest; but how to explain such a thing,
where to begin? "What if I tell and receive no belief?"

"Bound to be a hell of a story."

I could do no other but earplay, testing one approach and then
another. Obvious examples seemed safest to employ. "All right," I
said. "Jake's guns. His whole works. Their look unfamiliared,
true?"

"They was talking about secret weapons on the March of Time
last week at the picture show," said Wanda. "Don't mean nothing."

"Clothing of such styles as we wear?"

With probing hand he fingered my jacket, collar and tie. "So
you don't use dry cleaners. Got something instead of buttons on
your shirt. So what?"

Unpocketing my wallet, flipping it over, I demanded: "Examine."

Doc caressed the cover as if stroking his wife, with wonder and
fright, and ill-hid tension. "Your billfold's some kind of soft shit."
Spreading it, hearing Velcro's snap, he examined its strips, closing
and reclosing several times, listening to the pop. He gleaned my
personals within.

"This some kind of-" He didn't finish.

"What is it, Norman?" Wanda asked, stepping over. He pulled and showed my Drydencard, my Citicard, my Amex and Nynex;
the national number; my driver and army IDs with holographic
safeties ashimmer. They studied my snaps: my sergeants and
myself, Johnson foregrounded, in Long Island, all gone now but
me, taken just before the Children's Hour; a self-portrait as I stood
in Istanbul, Saint Sophia backdropped; the VP and myself before
the White House's Berlin-like wall; Katherine, my ex-wife,
perched hoodways on the uniform blue Castrolite Dryco provided
me with upon my joining the firm, her smile lying that she knew
no happier life than with me. From its clasp Doc shook ruble
notes, dollar bills and a clang of coins from my wallet. They gazed
silently upon them, as if watching sunrise at sea. He flicked a
quarter airward; landing, it thumped.

"This shit's not silver."

"Cuprolite zinc alloy," I explained. Doc rubbed it on his pants as
if to strike sparks, scratched it with his nails.

"'T'hese dates right?" Wanda asked; I nodded, but she didn't see.

"Still old George on 'em, though," he said. "Just like ours. Look
here." Unpocketing his own coins, he palmed them into mine: a
quarter, a dime, a heavy half, two pennies. The silver sang like
hells, hitting tabletop. The dime's symboled head wore a winged
cap; a negligeed woman strode the half's obverse. Washington,
true, was quartered. Each penny bore an Indian's head and a
nineteenth-century date.

"Lincoln?" Doc queried, seeing my hills, as if ignorant of his
being. Awaiting further comment, I heard none. They looked at
each other, then at me as they returned my holdings.