Deus Irae (24 page)

He lowered the jug. Tom eased away from his arm and sat unassisted. And then, by degrees, his eyes shut. He had passed out. Either that, or—god forbid; he was dead.

“Tom,” Pete said.

Silence. And the inertness of a million years: something below the level of life, something still inanimate which had never made it up to sentience. And probably never would.

Shit, Pete Sands thought. He took the bottle of wine, put the screw-type lid back on it, sat for a time. “The piece of luck I was talking about,” he called loudly. “Do you believe at all in destiny?”

“What?” Tibor yelled back, with signs of irritation.

Reaching into his pocket, Pete Sands got out his roll of silver dimes, always kept there. The all-purpose winning possession, he thought; he got a good grip on the roll of dimes and then tapped it against Tom’s cheekbone. Nothing. No response. Pete then tore the heavy brown-paper wrapper away from the dimes. The metal coins slithered and tinkled against one another, manifesting themselves into visibility.

“Carleton Lufteufel,” ol’ Tom muttered, eyes still shut. “That poor little inc. I wouldn’t want the poor blighted inc wandering till he got hurt. It’s a rough world out there, you know?” Ol’ Tom opened his eyes; they were clear and lucid as he surveyed the many dimes in Pete’s palm. “Chairman of the ERDA, whatever that is—and I gave the bomb order, if the inc asks me. Okay; I got it straight. Carleton Lufteufel, that’s me.” He coughed and spat again, ran his fingers through his hair. “You wouldn’t have a comb, would you? If I’m going to have my picture took—” He held out his hand. Pete gave him the dimes. All of them.

“Afraid not,” Pete said.

“You help me up then. Carleton Lufteufel, ERDA, bomb order if he asks.” Ol’ Tom put the dimes away, out of sight; all at once they were gone. As if they had never been.

Pete said loudly, “This is extraordinary. You think there’s a supernatural entity which guides men along every step of their lives? You think that, Tibor? I never thought so, not before. But my god. I have been talking with this man since he woke up. He is not well, but then he has been through a lot.” He prodded Tom Gleason. “Tell my friend who you are,” he said.

Tom showed a broken-toothed smile. “Name’s Carleton Lufteufel.”

Tibor gasped. “Are you joking?”

“Wouldn’t joke about my own name now, son. A man might use a lot of them in a lot of different places. But at a time like this, when someone’s been looking so hard for me, there’s no point in denying it. Yes, I’m Carleton Lufteufel. I used to be Chairman of the ERDA.”

Tibor stared at him without moving.

“I gave the bomb order,” the old man added, then.

Tibor continued to stare.

Tom appeared a trifle uneasy, but held his ground, held his smile.

But the moments passed, and Tibor still did not respond. Finally Tom’s face slackened.

A little longer; then, “You ever been in Denver?”

“No,” Tibor said.

Pete wanted to scream, but then Tom said, “It was a nice city. Pretty. Good people. Then came the war. They burned it, you know….” His face underwent contortions and his eyes glistened.

“I was Chairman of the ERDA. I gave the bomb order,” he said again.

Tibor’s head moved and his tongue licked over the control unit. An extensor moved, activating a stereo, full-color, wide-angle, tel-scope, fast-action, shirtbutton-sized war-surplus camera the Servants of Wrath had provided him for this purpose.

I will never know the best way, Tibor thought. I will never do the perfect job with a subject like this. But then it does not matter. I will do the best that I can, the best that I can to show this subject as he is, to give them their murch, as they want it, to glorify their god, as they would see him glorified, not to my greater honor and glory, or even to his, but simply to fulfill this commission, as I promised. Whether it was destiny or simply luck does not matter. Our journey is over. The Pilg has been completed. I have his likeness. What can I say to him now that this is done?

“I’m pleased to meet you,” Tibor said. “I just took your picture. I hope that is all right with you.”

“Sure, son, sure. Glad to be of help. I’m going to have to get back to rest now, though, if your friend here will give me a hand. I’m ailing, you know.”

“Is there anything we could do?”

“No, thanks. I’ve got plenty of medicine laid by. You’re nice people. Have a good trip.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Tom flipped one hand at him, as Pete caught his arm and steered him back to the stall.

Home! Tibor thought, his eyes filling with tears. We can go home now….

He waited for Pete to come and harness the cow.

  That night they sat by a small fire Pete had kindled. The clouds had blown over and the stars shone in the fresh-washed sky. They had eaten dry rations. Pete had found a half jar of instant coffee in an abandoned farmhouse. It was stale, but it was hot and black and steamed attractively under the breeze from the south.

“There were times,” Tibor said, “when I thought I would never make it.”

Pete nodded.

“Still mad I came along?” he asked.

Tibor chuckled.

“Go on, push your advantage,” he said. “… Hell of a way to get converts.”

“Are you still going Christian?”

“Still thinking about it. Let me finish this job first.”

“Sure.” Pete had tried to get through to Abernathy earlier, but the storm system had blanked him out. No hurry now though, he thought. It is all right. Over.

“Want to see his picture again?”

“Yes.”

Tibor’s extensor moved, withdrew the picture from its case, passed it down to him.

Pete studied Tom Gleason’s tired, old features. Poor guy, he thought. May be dead by now. Not a thing we could have done for him, though. What if—? Supposing it was no coincidence? Supposing it was something more than luck that gave him to us?
The irony I saw in Lufteufel’s victim deified … Could it run deeper even than irony? He turned the picture, looking into the eyes, a bit brighter for the moment as the man had realized he was making someone happy, a touch of pain in the lowering, the tightening of the brows as he had recalled his nice Denver gone….

Pete drank his coffee, passed the picture back to Tibor.

“You don’t seem unhappy,” Tibor said, “that the competition is getting what it wants.”

Pete shrugged.

“It’s not that big a thing to me,” he said. “After all, it’s only a picture.”

Tibor replaced it in his case.

“Did he look the way you thought he would?” he asked.

Pete nodded, thinking back over faces he had known.

“Pretty much,” he said. “Have you decided how you will handle it?”

“I’ll give them a good job. I know that.”

“More coffee?”

“Thanks.”

Tibor extended his cup. Pete filled it, added some to his own. He looked up at the stars then, listened to the noises of the night, breathed the warm wind—how warm it had become!—and sipped the coffee.

“Too bad I didn’t find some cigarettes, too.”

At the side of the dust-run serving as a road, the cretin girl Alice remained in silence, and a thousand years passed as sun came and day held a time and finally fell into darkness. She knew he was dead, even before the lizzy approached her.

“Miss.”

She did not look up.

“Miss, come along with us.”

“No!” she said, violently.

“The cadaver—”

“I no
want!
”

Seating itself beside her, the lizzy said in a patient voice, “By custom you’re supposed to claim it.” Time passed; she kept her eyes shut, so as not to see, and with her hands over her ears she could not be certain if it was speaking further or not. At last it touched her on the shoulder. “You’re a
re
tard, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“You’re too retarded to know what I’m saying. He’s dressed as a hunter, but he’s the old man you were shacking up with, the rat man. He is the rat man, isn’t he? Disguised. What was he doing disguised? Trying to get away from enemies, was he?” The lizzy laughed roughly, then, the scales of its body ambient in the noise of its voice. “Didn’t work. They bashed his face in. You should see it; nothing but pulp and—”

She leaped up and ran, then ran back for her forgotten doll. The lizzy had the doll, and the lizzy grinned at her, not giving the doll to her but pressing it against its scaly chest. Mockery of her.

“He good man!” she shouted frantically, as she scrabbled for the doll, her doll.

“No, he wasn’t a good man. He wasn’t even a good rat
catcher. A lot of times, more than you know, he sold old gristly rats for the price supposed to be the going rate for young plump ones. What did he used to do, before he was a rat catcher?”

Alice said, “Bombs.”

“Your daddy.”

“Yes, my daddy.”

“Well, since he was your daddy we’ll bring you the corpse. You stay here.” The lizzy rose, dropped the doll before her, and ambulated off, after its fashion.

Seated by the doll, she watched the lizzy go, feeling the tears running silently down her cheeks. Knew it wouldn’t work, she thought. Knew they’d get him. Maybe for bad rats; tough old ones … like it just now said.

Why is it all like this? she wondered. He gave me this doll, a long time ago. Now he won’t give me nothing more again. Ever. Something is wrong, she realized. But why? People, they are here for a time and then even if you love them they are gone and it is for always, they are never back, not now.

Once more she shut her eyes and sat rocking back and forth.

When again she looked, a man who wasn’t a lizard was coming along the dust-rut road toward her. It was her daddy. As she leaped up joyfully she realized that something had happened to him, and she faltered, taken aback by the transformation in him. Now he stood straighter, and his face had a kindness glowing about it, a warm expression, without the twistedness she had become accustomed to.

Her daddy approached, step by step, in a certain measured fashion, as if in solemn dance toward her, and then he seated himself silently, indicating to her to be seated, too. It was odd, she thought, that he did not speak, that he only gestured. There was about him a peacefulness she had never witnessed before, as if time had rolled back for him, making him both younger and—more gentle. She liked him better this way; the fear she had always felt toward him began to leave her, and she reached out, haltingly, to touch his arm.

Her fingers passed through his arm. And it came to her, then, in an instant, in a twinkling of an eye, a flash of insight, that this was only his spirit, that as the lizzy had said, her daddy was dead. His spirit had stopped on its way back to be with her, to
spend a final moment resting by the side of the road with her. This was why he did not speak. Spirits could not be heard.

“Can you hear me?” she asked.

Smiling, her daddy nodded.

An unusual sense of understanding things began to course through her, a kind of alertness which she could not recall from any time ever. It was as if a … she struggled for the word. A membrane of some nature had been removed from her mind; she could see in the sense that she could comprehend now what she had never comprehended. Gazing around her, she saw in truth, in very truth, a different world, a world comprehensible at last, even if only for an interval.

“I love you,” she said.

Again he smiled.

“Will I see you again?” she asked him.

He nodded.

“But I have to—” She hesitated, because these were difficult thoughts. “Pass across first, before that time.”

Smiling, he nodded.

“You feel better, don’t you,” she said. It was evident beyond any doubt, from every aspect of him. “What is gone from you is something terrible,” she said. Until now, now that it had gone, she had never understood how dreadful it was. “It was an evil about you. Is that why you feel better? Because now the evil about you—”

Rising silently to his feet, her daddy began to move away, along the dim marks of the road.

“Wait,” she said.

But he could not or would not wait. He continued on away, now, his back to her, growing smaller, smaller, and then at last he disappeared; she watched him go and then she saw what remained of him travel through a clump of tangled rubbish and debris—
through
, not around, ghostly and pale as he had become; he did not step aside to avoid it. And he had become very small, now, only three or so feet high, fading and sinking, dwindling into bits of mere light which drifted suddenly away in swirls which the wind carried off, and were absorbed by the day.

Two lizzys came toiling along toward her, both of them looking perplexed and somewhat angry.

“It’s gone,” the first lizzy said to her. “Your corpse is gone—your father’s, I mean.”

“Yes,” Alice said. “I know.”

“It was stolen, I guess,” the other lizzy said. Half to itself it added, “Something dragged it off … maybe ate it.”

Alice said, “It rose.”

“It what?” Both lizzys stared at her, and then simultaneously they broke into laughter. “Rose from the dead? How do you know? Did it come floating by here?”

“Yes,” she said. “And stayed a moment to sit with me.”

Cautiously, one lizzy said to its companion, in a totally changed tone of voice, “A miracle.”

“Just a
re
tard,” the other said. “Prattling nonsense, like they do. Burned-out brain muttering. It was just a dead human, nothing more.”

With genuine curiosity, the other lizzy asked the girl, “Where’d it go from here? Maybe we can catch up with it. Maybe it can tell the future and heal!”

“It dissipated,” Alice said.

The lizzys blinked, and then one of them rustled its scales uneasily and muttered, “This is no retard; did you hear that word she used? Retards don’t use words like that, not words like ‘dissipated.’ Are you sure this is the right girl?”

Alice, with her doll held tight, turned to go. A few of the particles of light which had comprised her daddy’s transformed being brushed about her, like moonbeams visible in the day, like a magic, living dust spreading out across the landscape of the world, to become progressively finer and finer, always more rare, but never completely to disappear. At least not for her. She could still sense the bits, the traces, of him around her, in the air itself, hovering and lingering, and in a certain real sense, speaking a message.