Worlds (21 page)

“They—they could have
me
arrested?”

“You assaulted them with a deadly weapon. Puke-O has killed people. The assault could be proven even if you hadn’t admitted to it.”

“But that’s insane!”

“Sister, I couldn’t agree more. But that’s the way it works.” He picked up his helmet. “Don’t worry. They’re probably too citywise to make a formal charge. If they did, it’s true we’d have to hold you in jail for a couple of days—but because of
your
countercharge, we’d have them in jail, too. We could put them in cells where they’d be sure to have bad accidents.”

Cold justice. “What you’re saying… if they don’t charge me, they aren’t going to jail?”

“No. We’ll pick them up, take them down to the station for fingerprints and retina scans. Ask them some questions. Since they didn’t hurt you, that’s all we can do.”

“They didn’t
hurt
me?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

I sank back into the cushions. “This is the second time.”

“You shouldn’t be out at this time of night alone, unarmed. This isn’t the nicest part of town.”

I was getting tired of hearing that advice. “Then what the hell are police for?”

“Sometimes I wonder.” He put on his helmet and spoke to me from behind the mirror blankness. “There are eighteen thousand of us and sixteen million of you. We can’t be everywhere. Will you be all right?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.” He nodded and walked out.

Before he’d come I’d bought some tea from the lobby machine and used it to take a pill. Now I could feel the pill taking effect. I sipped at the cold tea and looked over the bulletin board for a long time, and then went up to my room.

I touched the door and with a sick feeling realized it wasn’t locked. I pushed it open and slapped the light switch, expecting to find a burgled shambles.

“James?” He was sitting erect in the straight chair by my desk. How long had he been there in the dark?

He nodded slowly, glass eyes sparkling. “You weren’t home. I decided to wait for you.”

“How did you get in?”

“The door was open. You must have forgotten to lock it.”

In a rabbit’s rectum, I did. The Klonexine muted my anger/fear/frustration, but I still snapped at him. “Come back some other time. I’ve had an awful day. Three men tried to attack me.”

“Together, or seriatim?”

“All at once. Less than an hour ago.”

“You shouldn’t be out this late without protection.” I opened my mouth to answer that, but he reached under his left arm and slid out a small black hand laser, trailing two taut wires. “You see? Even I do, and I’m not one tenth as attractive as you are.”

“Isn’t that a laser?”

“Twelve shot.”

“I thought they were illegal for civilians.”

“Very much so.” He held it out, in my general direction, a little too long for it not to have been threatening. He replaced it with a soft click.

“I thought you were about the most nonviolent of the group.”

“That’s true, even to tense: I was: There is no group now.”

I didn’t say anything. “Where is Benny?” he asked.

“I was going to ask you that.” I sat down on the bed. “His landlord says he disappeared.”

“He did, and most conveniently. Two days later there was an FBI raid. There was some violence and loss of life.”

I don’t know why that surprised me. “Who?”

“No one you knew. Two of us and two of them.”

“And you think Benny, uh, reported you?”

“Either that, or the FBI picked him up and squeezed him. The coincidence of his disappearance can’t be coincidence. I wondered whether he had called or written to you while you were traveling.”

“He wrote me twice, poems. I’d be glad to show you the letters, but I didn’t keep them.” Memorized them, of course.
Please be careful what you think and say
.

“There wasn’t anything in the letters about the fact that he wouldn’t be here when you came back?”

“I can’t say.” Best way to lie is tell the truth. “The
poems were very obscure; they might have said anything. There was nothing but the two poems.”

He didn’t react. After a couple of seconds I opened my mouth to fill the silence and he said, “Last quarter you had a classmate who was an FBI agent.”

“Jeff Hawkings.”

“Did he know Benny?”

“The three of us got together a couple of times, on the way to class. Only twice; I think those were the only times they met.”

“It’s a possibility, though.”

“I can’t see Benny—”

“You can never tell. The FBI can plant an agent in a neighborhood and let him act out a role for years, just to eventually infiltrate a group such as ours. No one is completely exempt from suspicion, not even me.”

“Or me?”

“We checked on you, of course. You are what you claim to be.” He put on his hat and stood up. “I would stay away from this agent Hawkings. He may want more from you than your friendship.”

“I met him before I ever got involved with your group.”

“Still, prudence. I’ll be in touch.” Don’t be, I wanted to shout. He closed the door softly and the automatic lock snapped to.

I left for Chicago in the morning. Jeff was going to be out of town for the next three days, on maneuvers with the squad he’d just been given. I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with him even if that had been a good idea.

Chicago was a feint, of course; I was really headed for Atlanta and thence to Benny. But I did have a legitimate reason for going to the aptly named Windy City.

It was a biting cold, clear day, and the wind that rushed through the corridors between the kilometer-high buildings often gusted strongly enough to make you stagger for balance. I spent most of the day wandering through the art and science museums, which were not only edifying but also gave me many opportunities to make sure I wasn’t being followed.

Then I spent a rather awkward evening with my father, who lives in Evanston, outside of the city. We don’t have much in common other than physical appearance—the cube Mother has of him, in his late twenties, looks enough like me that we could be fraternal twins. So now I know what I’ll look like at fifty: flabby and fading. That’s a real comfort.

He was a nice enough man, though. Divorced eight years ago, living alone in a flat only a little larger than my dorm
room. Sort of wan and resigned. He was glad to see me, but I think he would have been glad to see anybody.

Afterwards, I felt exorcised, in a way. If he were happy I think I would have been bitter.

I slept on the tube from Chicago to San Diego; San Diego to Seattle; Seattle to Atlanta. Then surface train and public floater to Charlestown and Lancaster Mills, where I drank tea for a couple of hours in an all-nighter, waiting for a U-Rent to open. Rented a bicycle for the last ten kilometers.

I felt exposed and obvious, pedalling down the rutted farm road. I didn’t look up the two times floaters hummed by overhead. There was an unmarked mailbox just past the tenth milestone; I hooked the bike to it and picked my way down a muddy path to an old house that appeared to be made of wooden logs.

It actually was, about half logs and half cement, and it looked handmade. There was a cord hanging from a hole drilled in the door; I pulled on it and a bell rang inside. After several rings with no answer, I stepped off the little porch to peer through a cloudy window.

“Looking for someone?”

I jumped. He was easily two meters tall, but skinny. Cadaverous. Sharp features, dark sunken eyes, black beard stubble, rumpled faded work clothes, a double-barreled shotgun cradled in the crook of his left arm. He had come quietly from behind the house.

“Yes, I-I’m looking for Benny. Benny Aarons.”

“No one here by that name.” He scratched his stomach and the barrels of the gun swung around to line up on me.

“I might have the wrong farm,” I said, and realized that was possible: I might have stumbled on some crazy recluse. “I’m looking for Mr. Perkins’s place.”

He looked at me for a long cold time. “You have the hair for it. You be Mary Anne?”

I nodded vigorously. “O’Hara. Where’s Benny?”

“Supposing I knew this Aarons. Supposing you did too. Where did you meet him?”

“An English seminar at New York University. Dr. Schaumann.”

“And where did you go, the first time you went out?”

“The Bronx Zoo.”

He didn’t move at all during this whole exchange. Neither
did I. After a moment, he said, “Guess you’re her.” He let the gun slip and caught it expertly. “Let’s go inside.”

I followed him into the single large room. Where the walls were exposed, they looked the same as they did outside. Most of the wall space was covered with bookshelves, though, and paintings. One of Benny’s pictures was hanging over the fireplace, where a large piece of wood smoldered. It was hot and stuffy.

He motioned me to a rough table with two chairs. “Sit. I’ll get coffee.”

I sat. “I really don’t need any, thank you.” He grunted and poured two cups from the pot that was sitting on a black iron stove. He took a bottle of whiskey off a shelf and poured some into each cup.

He sat down across from me and slid one cup over. He shook his head slowly.

The smell of whiskey and coffee will always bring back to me that feeling of helpless horror growing. “Something’s… wrong.”

“Benny is dead,” he said precisely.

I think my heart actually stopped. A wave of remorse and fear rushed over me, so strong I almost fainted. Perkins reached across the table and steadied me, hand on my arm.

“What happened?”

He let go of me slowly and eased back into his chair. “Not what they say happened.” He raised his cup. “Better drink some.”

It made me cough and finally brought tears to my eyes. Perkins gave me a surprisingly clean handkerchief. “What do they say happened? Who are ‘they’?”

“The police, they say he killed himself.”

“Benny would never do that.”

“I know. And he doubly would never do it without leaving a note. Wordy son of a bitch. Excuse me.”

I blew my nose. “No, you’re right.”

“He was murdered. Now what the hell was going on? I knew he was in deep trouble but he wouldn’t tell me a damned thing. He said I was better off not knowing. Was there somebody layin’ for him?”

“I don’t know.” I didn’t know who, at least.

He took a cotton bag of tobacco out of his shirt pocket and began rolling a cigarette. “This is what happened. About three weeks ago. I put on some mush to fry for
breakfast and went out to the barn to get Benny. He had fixed himself a little room out there in the stable. Don’t have horses no more.

“Well… he was hanging there. Long rope tied up on the rafters by the hayloft.”

“My God!”

“Well, he didn’t do it himself. Somebody marched him up to the loft and put the noose on him and pushed him off.”

“How do you know?”

“You want a cigarette? I got some real ones around.”

I shook my head. “How can you tell?”

“You really want to know. Well. I cut him down. It was cold in the barn and he was stiff. He didn’t have no clothes on, that was the way he slept.” Perkins lit the cigarette carefully and sipped his coffee.

“I guess I stood and looked at him for a long time. Then I saw there was something wrong, I mean something peculiar.

“His left arm was dislocated, popped right out of the socket. There was a big brown bruise on his left wrist, and another on his right shoulder. You know what a come-along is?”

“No.”

“Well, you put somebody’s arm behind his back and pull it up, like this.” He reached around as if he were trying to scratch between his shoulderblades. “Then you grab his other shoulder and
push
. He has to come along with you. Police do it.”

“That’s how they got him up into the hayloft?”

“Right. And he must have struggled something fierce, to dislocate his arm and get those bruises.”

“I showed that to the police and they agreed with me, at first. But I called them a few days later and they said the case was closed, suicide. Said the coroner said the injuries were caused by Benny trying to get loose from the rope, after he’d jumped. Said a lot of people have second thoughts like that. But that’s a load. It just couldn’t happen.”

“Not Benny, no.”

“Not anybody. How’d he bruise his right shoulder? Did he do it before or after he’d popped out his arm? It’s a load, all right” He took a furious drag on his cigarette and
it showered sparks over the table. “The question is,
who?”
I nodded.

He banged the cigarette out on the jar lid that served as an ashtray. “You know more’n you think you can tell me.”

“I can’t… I hardly know you.” Then he read my mind.

“You think I might not be who I say I am?”

“That’s possible.”

“Well. I don’t have a flier’s license to show you. That wouldn’t do anyhow, I ’spect.” He got up and went to the stove for a refill; picked up the whiskey bottle and put it back down. “Want some more?” I said no. He sat back down and stared into his cup, as if gathering his thoughts.

“Benny and I were best friends in middle school. We’re line cousins. My folks moved up to New York for a few years and we lived in the same line house as Benny.” He waved at the hundreds of books. “He got me to readin’. I guess I was as good a friend as he had. Why don’t you ask me something about him? Like I asked you.”

“Believe me… you’re better off not knowing anything.”

“That just ain’t so. I been walkin’ around with a gun for three weeks. Better off if I knew what I might be up against.”

“I don’t think they’d bother you,” I said without too much conviction. He just stared at me. “All right. Tell me about Benny’s … love life. Did he have any homosexual experience?”

Perkins frowned and took his time answering. “If he did, he never told me about it. Wouldn’t expect him to, though. I know he had a really bad time with a woman some years back, and hadn’t seen many women until you came along. He told me a lot about that—say, I don’t want to embarrass you.”

“Sex doesn’t embarrass me.”

“Well, he was real confused about you because he had a hard time separating out the sex from the love. You know? Not the way most everybody does. Stronger, because he had nothing to go on, nothing good. And all of a sudden he had everything. He said there was nothing you didn’t know, nothing you wouldn’t do.”