Wish You Were Here (39 page)

The girl put away her notepad and stood up. Wesley, Calvin, Janice and Linda weren't there any more; even their reflections were almost completely faded off the face of the lake. ‘OK, guys,' she said, ‘show's over.'

‘Good,' Talks to Squirrels replied. ‘That was a hard day's work. Can't remember the last time I got killed so many times in one day.'

‘You did good, Talks,' the girl replied. ‘You all did,' she added, with a big smile. ‘You too, Prince. You really had 'em going with that bomb stuff.'

Prince Charming bowed. ‘My pleasure,' he replied. ‘They're all on their way now, then?'

‘At last.'The girl stood up, shook herself like a wet dog and became an otter. ‘And before you ask . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘I haven't decided yet who gets to go home,' the otter said. ‘But don't give me a hard time, OK? I'm thinking about it.'

She yawned and stretched; and as her arms rose above her head they became wings, and the dove flew away towards the mountains, which were back where they belonged and trying to get some sleep.

 

Linda emerged from the water like a bobbing cork, and felt for the bottom with her feet. The mud was only just deep enough to pull off one of her shoes. She stuck her arm in the water, grubbed around in the ooze until she struck footwear, pulled it out with an effort and squelched to shore.

She was sitting beside the road, wringing out her socks and wondering how long it took to get pneumonia, when a car drew up beside her. The window whirred down and a head poked through. On top of it was a round, broad-brimmed hat. From the brim dangled little bits of cotton. From the little bits of cotton hung corks.

‘G'day, love,' said a voice from under the hat, ‘but am I right for the submarine base?'

Linda froze, one half-wrung sock in her hand. She decided to adopt an experimental attitude towards the truth.

‘Yup,' she said.

‘Thank Gawd for that,' replied the funny hat. ‘I was sure this was the right road, but Rocco here keeps insisting we should have hung a left at the secret nuclear testing site.'

‘All right, Bruce, you made-a your point,' said the man in the passenger seat, who was wearing a scarlet dressing-gown, a rosary, one of those Lambretta hats, red gloves and a ring the size of a walnut. ‘Hey, you seen a couple of cement lorries pass this way?'

Linda held her breath. ‘You mean,' she said, as casually as she could manage, ‘the lorries fetching the cement they use to make the concrete blocks they conceal the unauthorised arms shipments in?'

‘That'll be right,' the funny hat confirmed.

‘They went, um, that way,' Linda said, pointing at random. ‘About a quarter of an hour ago.'

‘Huh!' The passenger snorted derisively. ‘Late as usual. I told the President, “Boss,” I said, “you no use that firm, not reliable. My brother-in-law, he very reliable, do you special deal.” The President, he no listen. Pfui!' the passenger added. ‘Come on, Bruce, time we go. Ciao.'

As the car drove off, Linda counted up to ten and pinched herself. Shit, she thought, if only I'd got that on tape . . .

Then she noticed the faint whirring noise.

She ripped back the zipper on her haversack. There, nestling among the socks and the underwear, was her pocket dictating machine. It was running, and on Record. Something must have jarred it - maybe the bump when she fell in the lake - and it had been recording away all this time . . .

She wound the tape back, and forwarded, and rewound, and backwards and forwards until she heard it. ‘G'day, miss, but am I right for the submarine base?'

Reverently, she closed her eyes. There was, after all, a providence that looks after newshounds; one that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. She started to grin -

And looked down at the lake, and saw the submarine. A few moments later, she was scrambling back down the hillside. By the time she reached the shores of the lake it was fully emerged; and there, standing on the conning tower, were four women. They were all indescribably beautiful, in an otherworldly sort of way, and they wore robes of white samite; which turned out not to be a sort of cheesecloth, as Linda had always assumed.

‘Hail,' they said in chorus.

‘Sorry?'

‘Hail,' they repeated. ‘Are you Linda Lachuk?'

Linda nodded. ‘Yes,' she said.

‘Linda Lachuk the
journalist
?'

She nodded again. ‘That's me,' she said, not without a certain pride.

‘Then you must come with us.'

‘I beg your—?'

‘To Avalon,' the fair ladies said, ‘which lies in the Blessed Realms beyond the sundering seas. To cover the story of a lifetime,' they added.

‘Huh?'

‘The truth,' said the four ladies, as the wind billowed their sleeves like sails. ‘The truth about the Kennedy assassination. Come with us, and we shall show you.'

Linda paused, still holding one wet sock. ‘Just a minute,' she said. ‘Is this some sort of a wind-up, because . . . ?'

The ladies frowned, all at the same time. ‘Certainly not,' they said. ‘We thought you wanted to know the truth about that fateful day in Dallas, Texas, is all. But if you're too busy . . .'

‘No!' Linda moved to spring forward and stubbed her toe on a rock. She didn't feel anything. ‘Wait, please. Tell me, what did . . . ?'

‘Ah!' The ladies smiled enigmatically. ‘You always thought, didn't you, that Kennedy was
shot
, that fateful day outside the Texas Book Repository.'

Linda nodded; and as she did so, she thought,
But he wasn't, was he? How could I have been so blind?

‘Whereas in fact,' the ladies said, ‘what actually happened was that, using the staged assassination attempt as a diversion, we caught up JFK in a cloud of fire and carried him, still living, into Avalon, where he lives yet, along with King Arthur and Sir Francis Drake and Elvis Presley and Princess Di and all the rest of 'em. But we expect you'd already half guessed. Now hadn't you?'

Linda couldn't help herself. She nodded. ‘There were some strong indications,' she murmured, ‘if you knew what to look for.'

‘Of course,' said the ladies, nodding sagely. ‘And we guess you know he'll stay in Avalon, timeless and unchanging, until such time as the peace of the Earth is once again balanced on the razor's edge; whereupon he will come again into the world of men, riding in his manifest glory on the wings of the storm, and . . .'

‘Yes?' Linda whispered.

‘Start World War Three,' said the ladies. ‘Come, time is short and we have far to go. How are you off for videotape, by the way? We have plenty, should you require it.'

‘Thanks,' Linda said.

‘Batteries?'

‘What? Hell, I knew I'd forgotten—'

‘We have many batteries,' said the ladies. ‘Come.Your destiny awaits you. Only you can cover the story.'

‘Yes,' Linda breathed, as if in a dream. ‘Only me . . .'

‘The public has a right to know. Come! Away! Away!'

And so Linda Lachuk, flower of all earthly journalism, took submarine for the fair isle of Avalon, that lies beyond the threshold of the dawn; and there she dwells yet, ageless and untiring, along with all the other antisocial pests they keep locked up there.

And all the headlines sounded for her on the other side.

 

As Calvin Dieb squelched his way out of the lake, his feet making wet-kiss noises at every step as the mud tried to steal his thousand-dollar gumboots, he noticed something small and shiny hanging on a bramble-branch that trailed down into the water. His car keys.

Hell, he muttered to himself, just as well I didn't lose them or I'd have been in real trouble.

After a short but knackering climb back up the hill he unlocked his car, which shrieked its alarm at him in friendly welcome, sat down heavily in the driver's seat and pressed the message button of his telephone.

-
Hello, Mr Dieb, this is Cindi from the office.Your ex-wife called, can you call her back? She sounded - um, well, strange. Kinda, I don't know how to put this, friendly. She didn't yell. Well, not much.To start with. 'Bye, now.

-
Hi, kid, this is Hernan.When can I have that goddamn Pedretti Brothers file back, and Dan Vleek says lunch Thursday is OK.Who the hell is Dan Vleek, and when he says lunch, does he mean lunch, or just lunch? Call back immediately. Ciao.

-
Helloewe, Mister Deeb, this here is from Norway Olaf Bjornssen calling, me you not are knowing, a line of shipping I ern, you I am anxious to instruct a maritime insurance claim for to be pursuing. My nermber is . . .

-
Hello, Calvin, this is Leonard. Been a long time, hasn't it? Maybe we could have lunch some day when you're free, there's a few things I'd like to talk over. Be seeing you.

-
Hi, son, this is your dad here. I love you, son. I guess that's all. See you sometime, maybe. 'Bye.

The last message gave Calvin quite a start, since his father had been dead these five years. In the end he figured it must be an old tape, not thoroughly wiped. He wiped it. Then he called Frank Lustmord.

‘Frank? Hi, pal. Look, this Lake Chicopee thing. I'm at the lake now, and . . . You bet, guy, no substitute for seeing with your own eyes. And it's just as well I did, Frank, 'cos believe me, you got a serious problem here. Serious problem. Huh? Well, Frank, it's otters. Yeah, otters are a serious problem. Yes, Frank, like in serious
environmental
problem. Well yes, I guess you could, if you wanted to get blasted into mush by every TV station and newspaper from here to Seattle. You wouldn't be able to
give
the goddamn plots away free with gasoline, Frank, those green freaks'd have you looking like Hitler's elder brother, the one the family was too ashamed to talk about . . . Well, think about it, Frank, it's better you know these things
before
you spend twenty-seven million dollars . . . Yeah, well, you know, it's what we're here for, buddy. That's why you pay me, to think of these things. No, that's fine. That's great, Frank. What,
all
your corporate business? Why yes, sure, I'd be only too happy - sure thing, pal. See you around. Yeah, bye.'

Calvin put down the phone with a dazed grin smeared all over his face like a comedian's custard pie. He had no idea what had possessed him to tell Frank Lustmord that the otters were going to be a problem; because they
weren't
, goddamnit, he'd checked on that very point. But whatever the reason, it had worked, and now he had the Lustmord Corporation's business tied up and in the bag. It was as if he'd taken a shotgun to shoot his own foot off, missed and blown a hole in the ground that exposed a seam of gold-bearing quartz.

Or was it . . . ? Nah. Been out in the sun too long without a hat. There is no patron god of lawyers, and if there was one He'd be so expensive that not even lawyers could afford to go to Him. There's Kali Ma, of course, and the Father of Lies and Mercury, god of thieves; but they're retained occasionally on a sort of consultancy basis, not to be construed as implying any ongoing contractual relationship. The lawyer stands alone in the cosmos, or at least he clings to its back, inserts his proboscis and sucks. If he, Calvin Dieb, had managed to ensnare the Lustmord corporation, it was through his own unaided efforts, or the random workings of Luck, or because Frank Lustmord had offended his own personal corps of gods badly enough to let himself in for a level of punishment on which locusts, boils and frogs are too cissy even to be considered.

He shrugged, switched on the engine and engaged drive. Just before he pulled away, however, he caught sight of someone on the road ahead of him, waving. Normally, he'd have driven straight on past; but hell, it was his day for acting out of character. He put the car in neutral and wound down the window.

‘What's the matter?' he asked.

‘Are you Calvin Dieb?' the stranger asked. A strange stranger, by all appearances; wearing a sort of black dufflecoat thing with the hood up, and carrying a long bundle wrapped up in black cloth that might have been fishing-rods but probably wasn't.

‘That depends,' Calvin replied. ‘Who wants to know?'

‘My card.'The stranger thrust a rectangle of black and red pasteboard through the window.

‘Pleased to meet you, M—' Calvin broke off as he read the one word on the card. He looked at it again, and then back at the stranger, or as much of the stranger as he could see past the dufflecoat hood. ‘Hi,' he croaked.

‘I've been looking for you all over,' the stranger said. ‘Your office said you might be here, so I came over.'

‘Ah,' said Calvin, making a mental note to sack everybody when - if - he got back. ‘Great,' he added. ‘You found me.'

‘Yup.' The stranger nodded. ‘And in case you don't believe what it says on that card,' he added, throwing back the hood, ‘these might go some way to confirming it. Yes?'

Calvin nodded. ‘Say,' he asked, curious in spite of everything, ‘don't mind my asking, but don't those things rip up the pillows when you sleep?'

‘They would, if I ever did,' the stranger replied, combing a stray lock of jet-black hair back into place behind the right-hand horn. ‘But I don't. Kinda goes with the territory.'

‘That figures,' Calvin muttered. ‘And what about the, uh, feet? What do you do about them?'

‘Nothing. That's the joy of hooves, they don't wear out. Look, why I wanted to see you was, for some time now I've been thinking it was time I got myself a really good lawyer.'