Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 (39 page)

           
I don’t disappear that easily,” I
said, and tousled her hair.

           
But I do, don’t I? Or I will. Or she
will, in fact. I’ll still be around, but she’ll disappear very easily indeed.

           
Per our agreement, she got up first,
since she takes longer in the bathroom, and I lay a bit longer in bed,
brooding. (Already we are working out these fine points of cohabitation.) But
what am I going to do with her, what am I going to do with Susan? It’s absurd,
I know it’s absurd, but I want to go on pleasing her, watching her reactions. I
have never felt so enjoyably at
service
before.

           
I even want to go on inhabiting this
body, which, for all its oafish awkwardness, has been serving me well. And the
fact is, the way the humans have structured their civilizations, their bodies
aren’t even that much of a liability. Chairs, automobiles, restaurants; they
have worked out fairly ingenious and even enjoyable ways of overcoming their limitations.

           
But what am I to do about
Susan?
I’ve thought and thought, and
there’s simply no way to take her with me, to pluck her off the Earth before it
transmogrifies. How would I do it? Where and how would she live? In a bubble of
air and soil from her former planet? First she would lose her mind—I mean,
immediately
she would lose her mind—and
then she would pine and die.

           
Susan is of this place. More, she is
of this place and
time.
There would
be no life for her in the deep spaces of the real, alone, the last of her kind,
with no companion but an amorphism she’s expected to call
Andy.
If I’m going to think about this, I at least have to think
realistically.

           
But I don’t want to lose her. I
don’t want to stop knowing her, that’s the long and the short of it. I don’t
want to stop being Andy, and I don’t want to stop being in love with Susan. (We
haven’t said the word, humans are often wary of that word, but we both know.)

           
I have choice, I know that, I have
free will, but on what could I bend that will? Where is the alternative? If
Susan stays on this Earth, she will be snuffed at the same instant as every
other creature, every plant, every molecule of air. But where could she go
instead? Nowhere. So where is the choice?

           
“I’m sorry, Congressman,” Reed
Stockton said, “but I just can’t go along with it.”

           
Congressman Stephen Schlurn leaned
forward, his reddened eyes burning into Reed’s. “Do you know who you’re talking
to, young man?”

           
Yes, he did, Reed Stockton knew
exactly who he was talking to, worse luck. A hell of a way to start a new job;
first day, first
morning,
and he has
to stand up and say no to a hotshot congressman, in fact the congressman in
whose district Green Meadow III Nuclear Power Plant festered, and who had a
sudden urge to be a... a what? A hero? A media star?

           
A headache and a jerk, in Reed
Stockton’s opinion. “I know who you are, sir,” he said, being both firm and
respectful, “and I have to tell you, it wouldn’t matter if you were the
president, I’d still have to say the same thing.”

           
The congressman shook his head,
showing how exasperated he’d been made by Reed’s stupidity. “It’s not as
though,” he said, “I’m talking about going in there
alone.
I want you with me, that’s the whole point.”

           
“Congressman,” Reed said, “I have to
tell you this is my first day as PID, and I’m not really prepared to put my job
on the line on any one person’s say-so. My predecessor, a fellow named
Hardwick—”

           
“I heard about him,” Schlurn said.
Hardwick’s shocking bewildering finish was being downplayed in public as much
as possible, but of course Congressman Schlurn would have his sources, he would
know all about it. “Went crazy, didn’t he?”

           
“Yes, sir. Killed a national
guardsman with a rock, went over the fence with the man’s rifle, and apparendy
killed himself inside. The helicopters have seen what’s almost certainly his
body.”

           
“I fail to understand,” Schlurn
said, “what that garish adventure has to do with you and me. I want
us,
representing the people and the
media, to walk openly and boldly straight through that main gate and down to
the plant and
talk
to these people,
one on one. All these telephone negotiations aren’t doing a damn thing, and I
don’t care if you only got the job ten minutes ago, you still have to know I’m
right about that.”

           
Give me strength, Lord, Reed
Stockton prayed, and he meant it. He was a religious person, raised a Methodist
by devout parents, married to a devout girl himself, the two of them raising
their first child—with more to come, God willing—the same way. When troubled or
harassed, Reed prayed for help, for guidance, for strength, and it seemed to
him his prayers were always answered.

           
And they would be again this time.
Knowing
that God was giving him
eloquence, Reed said, “Sir, you may be absolutely right about everything you
say. You’re an intelligent man, and a very persuasive man, and I wouldn’t doubt
for a second that
if
you could get
into a face-to-face discussion with the unfortunate people sitting in at the
plant right now you would very eloquently—”

           
“Sitting in?” Schlurn stared at him
with revulsion. “Did you say sitting in?”

           
“Yes, sir, Congressman Schlurn, I
did.” Reed permitted himself a small pleased smile. “And frankly, sir, I’m
proud of it. That was my idea.”

           
“Your idea.”

           
“Yes, sir. When I took over this
morning, there was a briefing session with General Bloodmore and the other
people in charge, and I made that suggestion and they accepted it at once. And
thanked me, sir.”

           
“Sitting in,” repeated Schlurn.

           
“It’s a much less emotive word than
anything else that has been used,” Reed explained. ‘Talking about hostages, and
terrorists, and invasions, and captures, and threats and all that, it simply
serves to escalate the danger quotient. Sir, I was a poli sci major at Cal Tech,
with a minor in communications history, and I like to think that I understand
what words do in public discourse. I think of that as my specialty. And to say
that what we have to deal with here is a sit-in suggests the possibility for
reason and discussion on both sides of the issue. It suggests a situation that
isn’t
really
dangerous.”

           
“But,” Schlurn said, “it is really
dangerous.”

           
“Sir, we don’t want to emphasize
that with the folk outside. Particularly those within one hundred and
twenty-five miles of the plant. Which includes, as you know,
New York City
.”

           
Schlurn considered. He and Reed were
standing on opposite sides of Reed’s desk—formerly poor Hardwick’s desk—in the
Press Office trailer, surrounded by activity they’d both been ignoring: secretaries
typing, telephoning, making copies. Now Schlurn, with those painful-looking red
eyes as though he hadn’t slept for a week—dreaming up this insane .scheme, no
doubt—looked around the trailer, looked back at Reed, and in a new low voice,
calmer than before, said, “I’m not going to persuade you, am I?”

           
“To let you on-site, sir? And to go
with you? No, sir, you aren’t.”

           
“The idea of yourself becoming a
media figure has no appeal to you.”

           
Reed smiled thinly. He
used
the media, he didn’t subscribe to
it. “No, sir,” he said.

           
“No, I can see that. Is there a
men’s room?”

           
“Of course, sir.”

           
Reed, magnanimous in victory, was
solicitous in pointing the way, and beamed at the congressman’s back as Schlurn
stumped
off.

           
Eloquence, that’s all it ever took.
Eloquence and calm. Reed, pleased and relieved at having survived his first
crisis in the new job, sat at the desk and went back to sorting through the
vast collection of messages left unreturned by poor Hardwick, who hadn’t
survived his last crisis at all, whatever it had been.

           
Five minutes later the congressman
was back, looking better than before, calmer and more in control of himself.
Even his eyes were clearer. He said, “Reed, I want to thank you.”

           
Reed jumped to his feet, scattering
message memos. “Yes, sir!”

           
“That was a dumb idea I had,”
Schlurn said. “I woke up with it this morning, and it just seemed great, and I
couldn’t get it out of my head all day. What I needed was a calm rational
person to look at me and say you’re crazy, and I’m grateful to you for doing
it.”

           
“Oh, Congressman,” Reed stammered,
“I never meant to suggest, uh, suggest...”

           
“Don’t worry about it, Reed, you
were right,” Schlurn told him, and grinned in a friendly reassuring way, and
slowly shook his head. “I don’t know what got into me,” he said.

           
How do I get in there?
How?

           
With all the temporal and heavenly
powers
both
blocking my way, with
them
all
united against me, guards
and angels and fences and force fields all opposed to my will, how do I get my
hands on that miserable quintet, those hopeless pawns?
How?
HOW? HOOOOOOWWWW!!!

           
And how much time have I left, to
get there?

           
Frank didn’t want any chummy
relationships developing between his group and the hostages, the eight staff
members kept here to run the plant under the eye of Grigor, but what could he
do? Human beings interact. It’s easier to be friendly, or at least courteous,
than impersonal and aloof

           
So it wasn’t long before Grigor was
saying, “Rosie, would you bring me that printout, please?” or “Mark, it’s time
to check the pressure gauges,” or even, “Fran, I’m thirsty, could you get me a
glass of water? Thank you.”

           
Frank wasted a little breath arguing
against this fraternization at first, but gave up when he saw he wasn’t getting
anywhere. And in any case it was easier for him, too, to address the hostages
by name, to say “please” and “thank you,” to act as though this was just some
kind of stupid boat ride they were all taking together, instead of what it was.

           
So they knew the hostages’ first
names, and after a while even some of their backgrounds and personal lives. And
the hostages knew Grigor’s and Kwan’s names, because the whole world knew their
names. Early in the negotiations with the people outside, Grigor had announced
both of their names and histories, to demonstrate the seriousness and
capability of the people who’d taken over, and to start to get their stories
out. And to show, as well, that they believed they had nothing to lose.

           
The hostages—and the world—didn’t
know Frank’s name, or Maria Elena’s, because on that he insisted, firmly
believing they were going to pull this caper off somehow. And they didn’t know
Pami’s name because they didn’t need to know it. Pami had gone all boneless and
weak the minute they’d established control of this place, as though that’s all
she’d been holding herself together for, and she spent most of her time now
either asleep in the dayroom or slumped in a chair, glowering at the world
around her with sunken eyes. There was no making human contact with Pami, not
by the hostages and not even by her companions.

           
Frank had expected Grigor also to
have collapsed by now, to be of little more than symbolic use once they’d got
themselves inside the plant, but that emaciated body seemed to find sustenance
and fresh vigor here in the control section. Dealing with the plant and the
hostages, negotiating with the thickheaded officials outside, it all gave him a
wiry energy that made him move as though he were plugged into his own electric
source.

           
Kwan was the one losing vigor,
particularly after the television announced he was simply a common crook after
all, and not a revolutionary, not a hero of
Tiananmen Square
. This was two days after Grigor had given
the names to the media. Apparently there was no way for them to smear the hero
fireman of Chernobyl, but the Chinese government was happy to announce that Li
Kwan was no more than a garden-variety criminal, lying about his past in an
effort to gain political sanctuary. And the American State Department, for
reasons of its own—no doubt solid hardheaded realistic mature reasons— was
happy to announce it had studied the documents the Chinese government had
provided as “prooP’ and to pronounce them genuine.

           
“That’s all right, Kwan,” Frank
said, trying to cheer him up, “the lie comes apart, don’t worry about it. You
already had a lotta ink, right? A lotta stuff in the newspapers about who you
really are.”

           
Kwan shrugged, silent little face
bitter, not caring.

           
“You’ll get your story out,” Frank
told him, and then made a mistake. “You’ll have plenty of time after this is
all over,” he said.

           
Kwan looked at him, with painted-on
eyes. Frank cleared his throat, and blinked, and patted Kwan on the shoulder,
and left him there.

           
Despite the weirdness of the
situation, despite its unprecedented craziness, life soon setded into a kind of
routine, which was something else Frank didn’t want or need. What he wanted and
needed was steady forward movement, negotiation and then planning out the final
details of the endgame and then doing it and home free. Stasis was his enemy.
Being stuck here in stalemate could only help the people outside, who didn’t
have this fragile cat’s cradle to hold together.

           
Meanwhile, nothing was getting
accomplished. Their grip on the plant was secure, but somehow that didn’t mean
as much as it should. The propaganda effect, for Grigor and Kwan, was just
about non-existent, buried within the media’s overriding interest in the caper.
Maria Elena’s more general ecologic point couldn’t seem to get made at all. And
Frank wasn’t getting his money.

           
The way that part was supposed to
work, at the final moment Frank was to split off from the rest of them. The
others all had their propaganda objectives, so were willing to let themselves
be captured to accomplish their agenda. So, assuming the goddamn stumble-minded
officials finally did come around to agree on the five-mil ransom, Grigor would
tell them to put it in suitcases in a car just outside the gate, and that a
member of the group would go out and drive the car away.

           
The story was, if the driver wasn’t
arrested or followed, and if he was permitted to get clear away, he would
telephone the plant six hours later and tell his partners still inside that
everything was okay. No phone call, the partners would destroy the plant. (In
reality, Frank would just clear out, and then the others would surrender. Fle’d
like to take Maria along, if she’d go, but that didn’t seem likely.)

           
First, though, the morons outside
had to get the idea into their thick heads that they had to come up with the
five mil.

           
Had
to come up with it, or they could kiss their goddamn nuclear power plant
goodbye.

           
And time was getting short.

*
 
*
 
*

           
Pami did the most sleeping, and even
when she was awake she was lisdess and cranky, like a colicky child. Frank
slept the least, driven by nervous energy, but they all, invaders and hostages
alike, took their turns on the sofas in the dayroom, covered by the thin cotton
blankets normally kept in a supply closet in case an emergency ever arose in
which staffers would have to remain at the plant for an extended period of
time. (Societal breakdown outside the perimeter had been the emergency the
planners had been thinking of, not the standoff that now existed.)

           
The only television set was also in
the dayroom. They kept it on all the time, to see how the world was perceiving
their situation, but turned the volume low, since there were always sleepers in
the room. It was the afternoon of the fifth day of the siege that Dr. Philpott
was first mentioned on that set.

           
Frank and two female staffers were
watching at the moment, sitting close to the set in order to hear it, with
Maria Elena and Pami and two other staffers asleep across the room, and Grigor
and Kwan and the remaining four staff members out in the main control room. “To
this point, nothing has been heard of the situation of Dr. Marlon Philpott, the
eminent scientist whose controversial experiments with anti-gravity led to the
strike at Green Meadow, which in turn-“

           
Frank looked away from the set. The
two women watching the program with him looked scared. You could see them
praying he wouldn’t ask any questions. But their prayers were not to be
answered.

*
 
*
 
*

           
Dr. Philpott stared at the TV set in
the lounge. “Anti-gravity? What the
hell
are they talking about?”

           
“Professor,” Cindy said, sounding
frightened and looking wide-eyed as she brushed the hair out of her eyes, “they
told
. They weren’t supposed to tell.”

           
And of course that was true. The
level of lay ignorance demonstrated by that anti-gravity reference had
distracted him from the even more egregious error in that announcement: they
weren’t supposed to tell.

           
The media knew he was hidden in
here, of course. He was the closest thing to a celebrity connected with Green
Meadow, so naturally the media would have sought him out at the very beginning
of the crisis, for statements and comments and interviews and all that, and God
knows the authorities had initially
wanted
him out of here. But he’d convinced them, finally, after a number of phone
calls—fortunately, the phones in here didn’t have to go through any switching
system that the terrorists would see—that both he and the lab were safer, that
the whole plant would be safer, if he stayed right here. (He didn’t tell them
he was continuing his experiment, merely that he was “safeguarding” it; a white
lie, that’s all, a venial sin of omission.)

           
But the media wasn’t supposed to
tell. As one of the officials he’d talked to on the phone had said, there would
be a “news blackout” on the whereabouts of the eminent Dr. Marlon Philpott
until this emergency was over. (And why were all scientists “eminent,” anyway?)

           
But, as ever in human affairs,
there’s always someone who didn’t get the message, some temporary assistant
subeditor in precisely the wrong place at the wrong time. “All we can hope,”
Philpott said, “is that the terrorists are too busy to watch television.” And
he went back into the lab to see how Chang and the infinitely minute speck of
something
in the deuterium was coming
along.

*
 
*
 
*

           
“This raises the ante,” Frank said.
“I’ll go in that lab there and get him and bring him here and put him on the
phone with those assholes, and maybe we’ll start to get somewhere.”

           
“I should come with you,” Grigor
said. “We’re not sure what’s happening in that lab.”

           
“I must come, too,” Maria Elena
said. “I want to see this laboratory. I want to see what this man is doing.”

           
“You don’t leave
me
in here with these people,” Pami
said. She’d had trouble waking up just now, and was more irritable than ever.

           
^cc
Well, somebody’s gotta
keep an eye on the store,” Frank said.

           
“You know,” Grigor told him, “most
of this is automated, it’s merely a matter of watching the gauges. We could
lock the staff in the dayroom while we’re gone, five or ten minutes. We would
bring Philpott here, and let them out again.”

           
“But who looks at the gauges?”

           
“Kwan.”

           
Frank looked over at Kwan, huddled
in a chair in the corner, lost in his own helpless despairing rage. “We’ll
see,” Frank said, and went over to him. “Kwan? You get the idea?”

           
Kwan looked at him without response.

           
Frank said, “We’ll lock these people
up, go over and get the mad scientist, and bring him back. You sit at the
controls there, keep an eye on things. If it looks like something’s gonna blow,
you fix it, right?”

           
Kwan’s head lifted slighdy. A faint
gleam came into those dead eyes.

           
Frank touched his shoulder, feeling
its bony hardness, tense as a bridge cable. “You don’t wreck it, okay? Not yet.
I tell you what: if the time comes to say screw it, let er rip, you’ll be the
guy to do it. Okay?”

           
A faint smile touched those gray
lips.

           
Frank grinned at him. “You’d like to
blow the whole thing, wouldn’t you?
China
and everybody”

           
With those eyes, and that smile, on
that fleshless face, Kwan looked like a death’s head.

*
 
*
 
*

           
No one was in the lounge to watch
the television set three minutes later, when a scared-looking newsreader tried
to shut the barn door, now that the horse was out and off and running. “From
his vacation home in
East
Hampton
,
Long Island
, the eminent scientist Dr. Marlon Philpott
today broke his silence on.. .”

           
In the lab, Dr. Philpott broke a long
tense silence to whisper, “It’s there.” He sounded as though he’d seen God.
“Chang? Cindy? It’s in there.”