Terraplane (30 page)

"Calm," Jake said, from her opposite end. "Calm, calm-"

Her right arm struck the couch as in fury, spinning dust motes
through the air. "If weather prediction holds, thunderstorm tonight
should bring additional possibilities. Nothing to count on. There
on paper written. But go to fair after retrieval. Get within range of
coil as it is turned on. 'T'imings and situation figured out-"

Without advance her legs flung themselves airways, knocking
back Jake, sending Wanda rearward with a thud. As one of her
Achilles tendons snapped she let out another long wail. Jake
struggled again to lower her legs, and I cradled her head, brushing the loose hair from her face. She stared into my eyes, showing
anger and incomprehension and scarifying hope; the blood on
her lower lip had dried, and crusted as she smiled. As I looked
at her, she slowly settled, her breathing quieting, coming lower
and lower. Her visible body showed as a quilt of black and
blue and greenish yellow. Her bloodshot eyes continued to look
upward, flickering as if stirred by outside charge. She lay
there, unmoving; Jake and Wanda pulled themselves closer to her
face.

"Is she-" Jake began to ask.

"Not yet," said Wanda. "It's a blessing. Usually the fits keep up
from here on out up till the end. Sometimes they get all quiet like
this, though, and then stay that way until they have one last
conniption-"

"Can she hear us?" I asked. "She's aware?"

Wanda nodded. "She won't answer, but she knows what's going
on. They always know what's going on. Lord, Lord-"

The three of us rested for long minutes, feeling hearts pound
away beneath chests, lungs aching with the gulp of air, the cooling
feel of sweat as it dried upon the body. Jake stared at Oktobriana as
she stared at him, or at any of us. He unpocketed the tracker,
flicked it on and read.

"Unmoved, now," he said, his voice oddly calm, as if enough
endorphins had passed through his own brain to bring a temporary
peace unto him, or so at least it seemed. "Settled at First Avenue
about Twenty-fifth. Righthand side."

"Bellevue," said Wanda. "They got him in the hospital."

"Bellevue," I repeated, thinking of our own day's germ-free
Bedlam. "Why've they moved him-?"

"Let's find and discover," said Jake.

"There's a chance," I said. "If we get there in time-"

"Doom's certified, Luther," he said. "We've other purpose to
serve as well." He gathered up the scraps of newsprint on which Oktobriana had transcribed late thoughts. "Hold these. They'll
essential later on."

"We'd best go in caution," I said. "By now they've investigated
the apartment. Certain to have word on the watch. How safe do
you judge an approach, Wanda?"

"Not safe at all," she said. "But I gather we got to do it. Let's get
going. Longer we kill time here, more time they'll have getting
ready for us. "

"Jake," I said, noting his mask, his evident peace. "What's
planned?"

"If not for him," he said, feeling beneath his jacket and coat
for his securities, "we'd not have come. If he'd not incited, I'd not
have thrown. If he'd not stolen, we'd have had and already tried.
She'd shine with health," he said, laying no direct blame on
Skuratov for the last specified. His face drew sheet white as his
blood settled deep inside him. With both arms, good and bad, he
lifted Oktobriana off the couch, pressing her against him as if to
warm her. We left the house as we'd found it. In the west clouds
showed; an oncoming front slowly taking the blue from the sky.
The air was heavy with verdant flowerscent and seaborne salt.

"Why do you keep looking around?" Wanda asked me as we
climbed into the car; Jake settled Oktobriana in the back, next to
him. "I mean you know there's nobody around here-"

"Long Island unnerves me," I said. "I knew bad times here."
Before she ignited, a sudden crash in the distance, the thump of
waves shore-pounding shocked my mind into remembrance.

"Trouble?" she asked. "Had an accident out here or something?"

"Went to war out here," I said. We edged down the drive, our
tires chewing at the gravel below. Jake drew out his pocket-player as
he supported Oktobriana upright; her head sagged loosely on her
neck, resting against her shoulder. He kept himself unphoned, so
as not to lose himself too deeply-in event of Oktobriana's stirring,
I supposed. When he switched on the player his music soaked us in
acid's bath.

"Got to keep movin', got to keep movin'-
"Blues fallin' down like hail, blues fallin' down like hail-"

"War?" she asked. "What kind of war?"

"Prolonged war," I said. "Twenty-odd years. I was here for just
one, but it served purpose-"

"Blues fallin' down like hail."

"On Long Island?" she said as we turned onto the dirt road
leading us back to the highway. "Why'll there he war out here? War
with who?"

"With Long Islanders," I said, too overcome by onrushing
memory to detail overmuch. "At a point later on it becomes neces-
sary"-in our world, it became necessary-"to declare martial
law due to a variety of circumstances. Most people went along with
it. They didn't out here. That's it in basic."

She shook her head. "That's all right. I don't have to know "

"How long a passage in?" asked Jake. Oktobriana's eyes drifted
from side to side; I wondered what she watched. I looked at Long
Island as we passed through its daylight, its perfect weather.

"Not more'n an hour, if we're lucky," said Wanda. "I'm going to
go in a different way, avoid all the fair traffic. Got to stop somewhere soon and get gas." We reached the main road; turned back
towards town. "You going to bring this guy back out with you once
you find him?"

"We'll bring what's needed," said Jake.

`And the days keep 'mindin' me,
"There's a hellhound on my trail-"

On that perfect Long Island afternoon our unit had continued
down Hill Street towards town. Seeing smoke rising from shore's
direction, hearing the pop of distant gunfire, sounding as caps
from a child's pistol, we realized that our fellow platoons were
delayed at the beach, and so we marched towards the ocean to
assist, nothing disturbing our ears but the wind's rustle, and the
unending barrage. We crept across the rangy grounds of one of the
neighborhood's older cottages, a blasted lowrambler that must once
have held twenty rooms. Poised at the murky, brush-choked pool's
patio were plastic flamingos of unusual heredity; each pink body carried two heads. Muller approached them, pulling his nonissue
.44; he dropped to position and aimed at their dualities.

Yeeehah, he shouted. Ambients. Plug 'em.

He fired; they were boobied. Before the flashbulb splash, before
the air split with explosion's sound, I'd flattened, as had most of the
men, who generally did whenever they saw Muller act in moment's
heat; the twelve nearest hadn't, and they writhed on the ground like
fish blown from a barrel. Muller was beyond flattening. We
radioed in to obtain wounded's airlift and prepped to call down
vengeance on whatever we found.

"Hellhound on my trail."

"She's burning, Luther," Jake said, his hand pressing her forehead; he'd set his pocket-player's tune into recycling loop, so that
the song repeated without end. "Warming like she's microwaved."

"Increased metabolism, Jake," I said. "Her fever."

We pulled away from the Esso station at which we'd stopped to
refill; as we left its lot I looked beyond the tall, glass-domed pumps
to see the three rest room doors at building's side: men, women and
colored. The proprietors had no qualms over accepting our money.
"How much longer?" I whispered to Wanda; she kept eye on the
lane before her.

"Not over forty minutes, Luther. I'm going as fast as I can without getting pulled over-"

"I mean Oktobriana," I said. "How much longer, do you think?"

"Tonight," she said; the car's clock showed two-thirty. "Sooner,
maybe. Depends on when she goes into another fit. Can't be much
longer."

"No question?"

"She's lucky, under the circumstances," she said. "Man used to
live three floors above us carne down with it. He had it three
months before he got to this point. Believe me, Luther, it's a
blessing she's going fast as she is."

"If she goes before we do-"

"Don't worry yet," she said. "'T'hat happens, they'll catch us
soon enough. We'll be going to meet her not too long after that."

"If today was Christmas Eve, if today was Christmas Eve,
"And tomorrow was Christmas Day-"

I'd sent Johnson up ahead to size the situation at closer range.
Beyond a row of trees we heard shooting's sound come without
pause. Drawing closer, we saw the house from which the snipers
worked, ridgetopped just before the beach's stretch, standing at the
edge of a wide field. The place was one of blankfaced neomodern,
done with swoopcurved concrete, opaque glass and tubular steel
pipe. Our compatriots had been pinned down on the beach as they
landed, and slower ones lay scattered over the sand. I estimated
Johnson was doing all right, though he hadn't yet returned. Under
circumstance there was but one way to deal with such a threat as
presented. At my word, Padilla directed two of his men to position
rocket launchers. They awaited their cue. As I gave it, the house
lights went up.

"If today was Christmas Eve-"

"Your friend hasn't gone anywhere else, has he?" Wanda asked
after my next check of the tracker. We'd entered the outskirts; on
either side of our street showed row houses and one-story shuttered
shops, gas stations and brick churches, their names plain for all to
read: St. Paul's Doctrinarian, the Valentinian House of God, St.
Joseph's Holy Roman Catholic Church, the Albigensian Church
of Jesus the Light, Reformed. Leaving city behind for the nonce,
we drove past unending cemeteries, their stone markers stretched
horizon close; I wondered how many had died like Oktobriana. In
the rearview I -eyed them, one losing, one lost.

"No," I said.

"I'll park close as I can to where he is," she said. "That thing can
narrow it down for us, right?"

I nodded. "Once we're ranged."

"When you get out just go in through the front," she said.
"Don't stop to sign in, nine times out of ten you don't have to
anyway. Walk in like you own the place and you shouldn't have any
trouble. "

"Fine-"

"Not at first, anyway," she added. "Then it's up to you."

"Oh, wouldn't we have a time, baby."

From within the inferno we heard high-pitched screams. Fireballs rushed from the house, smoldering and snuffing once they'd
flung themselves onto the field behind. Billowing black clouds
dyed the blue sky, their smell rich with ash and frying grease, an
excremental stench. My men neared the flames to judge the viability of housebound residents. Jets migrated above, flying in
geese's formation. The ocean glimmered as if bejeweled, sum-
merglory's light striking sparks from its waves.

They're small, said Klonfas, shouting back after examining one
of the fielded.

`All I need's my little sweet woman,
"Just t'pass th'time away-"

Brooklyn and Queens showed so gray as the sky had become; it
was ever harder to spot the skyline ahead between the everrising
factories and apartments around us. Our approach seemed unreasoned; I wouldn't have thought the Midtown Tunnel had yet been
built, but towards its location was where Wanda seemed to aim.
Soon enough it evidenced that while there was entrance to Manhattan from this direction, it was not through the underground.
From Greenpoint, or thereabouts, a suspension bridge ran into
Thirty-fourth. Crossing the bridge, reaching Second Avenue,
Wanda headed downtown and then over again. At First Avenue and
Twenty-fifth, on the right, Bellevue's redbrick hulk rose, stretching
north for several dismal blocks, all replaced by newer outdated
hulks in our day.

"You can tell where he is in there with that?"

"North building," I said. "Not far in but somewhere on high.
Can't tell the floor till we're inside."

Shutting off his music, Jake, with care, lay Oktobriana down
onto the back seat as he readied to step out. She remained no less
still than she had been for the last hour. Wanda curbsided the car
on Twenty-eighth and cut the motor. The building in which he
showed stood just to left. Looking about, we saw none of law's
minions, or prints left by the long arm's hand.

"Anybody wants to see your papers, just show'em that passport,"
Wanda said, giving further guide. "Say you're visiting from Mount
Sinai, you have to. They got foreign docs running through all the
time. Whatever you're going to do, be quick about it, if you can."

The entrance was off First; we strolled around, aiming downstreet, seeming nonchalant as if we'd stepped out to take the air.
Shoving through dark wooden doors resembling the el station's, we
entered. In our time hospitals generally are lit so brightly that to
open your eyes within them is to risk blindness. All within Bellevue
was steeped in shadow. Through the shade we saw the bile green
walls, the hissing light fixtures above and the dirty, worn tile floors;
the all-Caucasian mass of patients milling about, dotted amidst
its rush with white-capped nurses and white-suited doctors.
Throughout the entrance hall many smoked; doctors and nurses
smoked. Ceiling fans did little but spread heat and odor, those
familiar smells of alcohol, of fresh gauze, of oncoming death.

"If asked," said Jake, "we're specialists."

"Doctor Zuckerman," an unbodied voice called from wooden
loudspeakers wallbolted above us. From downhall came screams'
sounds; Jake appeared not to notice. "Please report to the emergency room. Doctor Zuckerman-"

"Where's he kept, Luther?" Jake asked, striding ahead as if to the
firing line; in his whites he appeared as might any surgeon adept at
sliding the knife. Keeping the tracker hidden within my hand, I
looked.