Waiting (29 page)

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Authors: Frank M. Robinson

BOOK: Waiting
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Chandler’s studio was three flights up.
Artie took his time climbing the stairs, slowly putting his weight on each tread so the squeak of wood wouldn’t give away his presence. There were two apartments opening off the back porch, and he hesitated for a long moment, trying to decide which one was Dave’s. There was a litter box outside of one door, waiting to be emptied in the morning. Did Dave keep cats? He couldn’t remember any, then found a wooden slat on the porch and carefully dug into the box. It definitely hadn’t been for a kitten, so the chances it was for a pet Chandler had recently acquired dropped considerably.
He worked with the lock of the other door for a minute, a simple eyebolt-and-latch affair, and managed to lift the latch with the thin blade of his pocketknife. The Manhattan mania for half a dozen dead bolts and chain locks hadn’t hit this part of the Marina yet. There had been a time when almost nobody in San Francisco locked their doors and hardly anybody was ripped off, a far more innocent era that was now one with the ages.
He opened the door and slipped through, closing it noiselessly behind him. With good luck he’d find Chandler asleep; with bad luck he was probably in his theater/office watching an old movie.
He started down the long hallway that led to the front of the apartment. The office and home theater were about in the middle. It was gloomy but not completely dark; the door to the office/theater was open and the glow from the television screen suffused into the corridor enough so Artie could just make out the framed photographs and posters on the wall. Dave had been acting all of his life and was mediocre in most roles but superb in the most important one he had ever played: that of the
Homo sapiens
“Dave Chandler.”
If Chandler were really the Hound.
Artie caught himself wishing desperately for Mitch Levin. With Mitch along, he’d have a decent chance. Without Mitch, he didn’t stand much of one at all unless he caught Chandler by surprise and didn’t make the fatal mistake of waiting. But what was he going to do, walk in and shoot Chandler where he sat? So far it was all surmise. If he were wrong, he’d spend the rest of his life regretting it. If he were right, then it was either him or Chandler—and he would have to be damned fast.
The Hound had come very close in the library. The next time, it wouldn’t miss. He, Mitch, and Charlie Allen, all friends of Larry Shea’s, were the only three left. And maybe Chandler, if he were wrong.
But he knew instinctively he wasn’t.
A movement to his left caught his eye and he whirled. There was nothing there but one of the posters, the one of the beach scene in
From Here to Eternity
. But Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr were naked—and moving.
Artie swore quietly to himself. His hand holding the automatic was suddenly slick with sweat.
“It’d be easier if you turned on the lights, Artie. The switch is on the wall, a foot ahead to your right.”
 
Artie froze, then reached
out and flipped it on. The lights weren’t blinding, as they had been in Mary’s house. They were just about as bright as they would be in a theater auditorium before the feature started.
“Come on in, Artie—have a seat. Popcorn?” Chandler turned off the DVD player and the television screen flashed blue, then turned black.
I said you’d come to me, monkey
… .
It was only a wisp of a thought, just enough to convince Artie he’d made no mistake. He should have shot Chandler when he came in the door but he’d hesitated a fraction of a second too long. Now he couldn’t move a muscle.
Chandler was sitting behind his desk like he had been two days before. Artie stared. His voice was normal but his face was still covered with white ointment, though it obviously didn’t hurt so much now because Chandler was smiling at him. Artie caught his breath. Chandler had disguised his voice the last time he and Levin had seen him. Now it was the familiar voice and a face he couldn’t quite see.
Like Watch Cap at the skating rink.
“No sense in keeping this shit on any longer, though some of the neighbors might think I’ve made a miraculous recovery. But it wasn’t for them, it was for you and Mitch.” Chandler wiped at the ointment with a makeup towel. The red-furrowed, pink mask was peeping out at Artie now, and Chandler started peeling it off in strips. He had never gone to the emergency room, Artie thought. If he had, it would have been reported and Schuler would have been all over them the next day.
Then Artie stiffened. Under the makeup were raw, red scratches. The signs of Cathy’s fight for life.
“I thought for sure I wouldn’t fool you guys—you knew I was an actor, you knew I’d lived with makeup all my life. If you were watching a movie with special effects or a blue screen, you’d know it immediately. I guess this was just too simple.” He looked at Artie in mock amazement. “And I was sure I’d blown it in the restaurant when I said I’d had lunch with Larry and he told me about his article for
Science
. Hell, you guys knew I wasn’t that tight with Larry. Cathy told me about the article, what was in it.” He shook his head. “A real no-no.”
“What are you going to do?” Artie tried to keep the question casual but didn’t succeed.
“What am I going to do? With you?” Chandler made a temple of his fingers and leaned back in his chair, his fingers directly beneath his chin. “How’s your health, Artie?”
Artie could feel the sweat pop in his armpits and on his forehead.
“Fine. Why?”
Chandler shrugged. “Perfectly healthy people with normal checkups have heart attacks all the time. They’re unpredictable. Little flaws in the pump or the circulatory system that doctors never catch beforehand. Fairly decent way to go, all things considered.”
“And my body?” Artie asked.
Chandler glanced at his watch. “They’re hardly going to find it here. I think the appropriate place for you to die would be home in bed, all tucked in and peaceful. A quick, painless exit from this world and the only people you’ll be able to tell about me and mine will be those in the next.”
“Mitch—”
“Levin? I’ll catch up with him. I’m surprised you trusted him so much, Artie. You had almost as much to fear from him as you did from me. In one sense, even more.”
He’d known it all along, Artie thought, he just hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“He’s one of you, one of the Hounds.”
Chandler looked surprised. “Not one of ours, Artie. One of yours. You mean to tell me you never knew? And I thought he was one of your best friends.” He studied Artie a moment. “You’re something of a Hound yourself”—he shrugged, contemptuous—“but not a very good one. More of a hare.”
Artie decided to try to bluff it out.
“You can’t just give me a heart attack at will … .”
Chandler leaned across the desk and stared at him, his blue eyes hypnotic.
“Try and lift your right arm, Artie—the one holding your automatic.”
Artie tried again. His right arm was as limp as spaghetti—he couldn’t budge it.
“How do you do that?” He was more curious than frightened now.
“I can’t tell you how, Artie. The best I can do is give you an example. Your species does it all the time, but mostly when you’re kids. You’re in a crowd at a theater or a store and just for fun you concentrate on the back of somebody’s head and eventually they turn around in annoyance, wondering who in hell has been staring at them. A rather simplistic example of controlling somebody else with your mind. Give yourself thirty-five thousand years and you might become quite good at it. Even to the point of controlling somebody’s autonomic nervous system.”
“That’s impossible,” Artie said.
“Is it? A species can change a lot in thirty-five thousand years. You can learn to do a bunch of impossible things in that amount of time.”
“And you pass it on, I suppose.”
Chandler half smiled. “You have books, we have racial memory. They each have their advantages.”
“Too bad you don’t have a conscience,” Artie said.
“Hey, good B-movie line, Artie. I’m impressed.” Then, indignantly: “And you do? Jesus Christ, you were in ’Nam. Bad things happen in wars; that’s the nature of them. You gave out medals for a lot worse than anything I’ve done. And whether you care to admit it or not, we’re in a war. You and yours against me and mine. Like the IRA and the Brits, Hamas and the Israelis. You want a declaration of war? Hell, nobody declares them anymore.”
“War,” Artie said, feeling stupid.
Chandler looked surprised.
“War, Artie. The one that started thirty-five thousand years ago. You won all the battles back then but now it’s our turn.”
What did you do when the enemy looked like you, sounded like you, and wasn’t wearing a uniform? It would be worse than the Civil War, much worse. You’d never know where the front lines were until it was too late.
“Cathy and the kids,” Artie said slowly.
Chandler’s handsome face was shadowed.
“Cathy knew more than the rest of you, and she knew it first. Whatever I did, no matter how much I stopped the leaks—Paschelke, Hall, Lyle—she was the important one who’d gotten away. I never would have found her if she’d stayed hidden. But then she called and asked me to come over.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t believe my luck.”
“First you laid her, then you killed her,” Artie said in disgust.
“I slept with the enemy and you think that was a bad thing.” Chandler looked amused. “Everything’s fair in love and war, Artie—it was love for her and war for me. I’m probably species amoral but then, we’re not all alike any more than you’re all alike. But I didn’t rape her—she asked. I think she lived half her life in bed. They may be different species, but donkeys don’t refuse to screw mares. And I’m sure they both enjoy it.”
“And the boys?”
“They knew me, they saw me come down the stairs, and I had no idea how much they might have heard about Larry’s project around the house. The stakes were too high; I couldn’t take the chance. I did what was necessary.”
He studied Artie’s expression. “Okay, I see I’m still a monster. And you an ex-military man! Didn’t the army ever give you a course in ethics? Or maybe it’s morals, I’m always confusing the two—or maybe I’ve got the wrong word entirely. Say your platoon is lying in ambush along a roadside, waiting for the enemy. A young boy who doesn’t know you’re there starts across the road and doesn’t see the first enemy tank coming—don’ t ask me why he doesn’t hear it. Do you jump up and save the kid, thus giving away your position and endangering all your men, or do you let the tank run the poor kid down? Maybe it’s a bad analogy, but you see what I mean.”
Artie sat there, silent. Chandler suddenly hit the top of the desk with the flat of his hand, his face grim.
“Don’t talk to me about innocent bystanders, Banks! Nobody gives a shit about innocent bystanders in a war! How many women and children died in Dresden and Hiroshima and London? Tell me whether it makes a difference if you kill them face-to-face or from ten thousand feet up! I’d like to think that matters to your species, that you couldn’t kill if it had to be done face-to-face. If it did, you would have had far fewer wars, wouldn’t you? But then there were the ovens, and face-to-face it turned out nobody was exempt. Or go back to Agincourt, when Henry the Fifth had his soldiers slaughter the helpless French prisoners. Did you applaud in the movie when the English won? But that’s right—they didn’t show the slaughter of the prisoners, did they? Maybe if they had, the applause wouldn’t have been quite so loud.”
“That was war—”
“And what the hell do you call
this
?”
For a brief moment, Artie was back on the path by the river’s edge, a member of the Tribe watching a Flat Face hold a young boy over the river and cut his throat.
“One of our racial memories,” Chandler said. “Some things we wish we could forget but can’t.”
“That was thousands of years ago—”
“Not to us. If you’re cursed with racial memories, it might as well have been yesterday, Banks.”
“You have plans—” Artie started, desperate to stall.
“In the short run? To see that you have a heart attack—back home, safely in bed. It could be a lot worse. Artie. In the long run?” Chandler thought for a moment. “I’m not sure—not my department. But it’s time for your species to go; nature made a mistake and it’s time to rectify it. Frankly, I don’t think it will be that hard. Your society is so interconnected that, technologically speaking, one man could bring it all down. But in what part of the machinery should he throw his wrench? It’ll probably be something along biological lines—you’re more vulnerable than you might think.”
Artie didn’t say anything and Chandler looked amused.
“Do you honestly believe your world can totter on for another thousand years? You know it can’t, no way. Another hundred? Would you bet on it? A few years ago your Pat Robertson gave it all of five—five years to the end of your world! He’s probably more correct than he thinks.”

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