Gravity Box and Other Spaces (28 page)

Thomas fell at the edge of the pit, scraping his hands on gravel and stone, mud splashing into his face. He spit out dirt and groped for his handkerchief. He wiped muck from his eyes and blinked.

Below, a huddle of men stood thigh-deep in the brackish water, gathered around a large, bulbous object slowly rising from the murky bog, trapped within a loose cage of rope. The men worked feverishly with shovels and poles, water churning around them, trying to free the mass from whatever held it from beneath. As he watched, Thomas saw what first appeared to be a bull's horn swing up between two of the workers. One of them grasped the horn and tried to lever out the rest out.

“Be careful!” Peale raged.

Thomas screamed as a boot came down hard on his right hand. He jerked to pull free and felt a rock tear at his palm.

“Will you—!” he began, twisting to look up.

Reverend Bennington stood there, eyes wide and furious, oblivious to rain and Thomas's pain.

“Stop!” he cried. He raised a hand. Thomas yanked once more and managed to tug loose, shifting Bennington's foot.

Bennington overbalanced and pitched over into the pit, tumbling down the steep slope, and fell face first into the water.

The mass came loose, rolling around in its ropes. One horn caught a workman in the face, spinning him around. It rode up, dripping muck, several feet above the workers, and bounced against its ropes. Even in the heavy rain Thomas heard a crack like snapping bone. He looked at where it hung, directly across from him.

Two massive horns swept up from a ruin of face—nose gone, two enormous eye sockets staring at him. He could see no mouth, but Thomas saw a grin. Despite himself, the only image that came to mind was the medievalist's rendering of the Beast. Drenched by rain, his hand aching and bleeding, Thomas shuddered.

“I don't believe in you!” he shouted at it.

Deep within the eyeholes an orange glow ignited.

Then why did you come looking for me?

“What?”

The head swayed and the eye sockets glowed brightly.

Why have I been disinterred?

The voice did not seem to come from anywhere. Perhaps the rain confused Thomas' hearing. Perhaps he only imagined it, but he felt compelled by it, by a profound authority inherent within its timbre.

“We seek the truth,” Thomas said, his teeth chattering.

Do you? But I am the master of lies.

“You're a set of bones! A fossil! You are not real! We have no use for lies!”

No?

“Careful! Get that man away from there!”

Thomas jerked his head around. Peale was pointing down into the pit again, his face red and puffy even through the veil of rain. Below, workmen struggled with someone in their midst.

“Bennington—” Thomas hissed.

The Reverend was stretching a hand upward and shouting, his words only a mumble to Thomas. He twisted amid his captors. For a moment it seemed they had him subdued. But then he was free, struggling through the rising muck toward the huge skull dangling above him. He flexed and managed to jump. He fell a few feet short of the fossil, landing heavily in the hole from which it had been pulled.

Waist-deep, he flailed. Workmen converged on him.

Thomas pushed himself to his knees.

As you wish it, then. The truth is all you'll have now. But you may come to miss me.

The intense chill Thomas felt came from within. The rain felt warm to him. His vision rippled through the water.

A gust of wind pushed the horned skull in a wide arc. On its return swing, a rope gave way with a loud snap. Helplessly, Thomas watched the head begin to lean out of one side of its bonds. A man reached out with a long pole and tried to hook the ropes above it to pull it toward the rim, but suddenly the entire mass rolled out and fell, crushing Reverend Bennington.

People screamed and shouted; more men climbed back down the walls of the pit to work at moving the giant head and rescue the man buried beneath it. Thomas crawled backward from the edge until he felt safely distant.

He struggled to his feet.

The ghost had changed. The smooth beauty of its skin was gone, replaced by a tatter of decayed flesh through which maggot-cleaned bone was visible. The clothes lay in torn and filthy strips on its bloated body. Blood vessels traced paths in the parts of the face and neck still intact and the eyes gazed at him with cataract dullness. Thomas choked at a brief smell of putrefaction.

“Richard—”

Abigail walked up behind the ghost and faced it. She stared, clearly able to see it now. Her eyes shimmered with tears.

She looked up at Thomas. “Let me have him.”

“What? Like this?”

Abigail's gaze seemed to caress the specter. She nodded. “He's beautiful.”

“He—”

Thomas swallowed. He closed his eyes. He realized that he did not resent Abigail anymore. She was choosing nothing he would choose, a decayed past and no clear
future, but it was her choice now, not a reaction to him, and in so doing she absolved him. Whether that was her intention he could not say, but something new was now possible. He nodded. When he opened his eyes again, Abigail was gone, along with the horror image of their long-dead son.

He stood there till the rain abated, wondering what he had just done. The excited shouts of workers and spectators finally drew him back to the pit.

Bennington's body was being dragged up the steep slope with a rope tied to his ankles. The skull, now inverted, was rising up smoothly. From this angle, it appeared to be a kind of elephant's head. One side was caved in from the fall. Its empty eye socket collapsed. No power remained there; it was just a skull, empty and unexciting.

Thomas shivered and walked away. There was nothing for him here, and he had work to do.

Paul kept his hands folded neatly on his lap. He glanced down at his son beside him. Jonathan, four years old, imitated Paul—hands folded, back straight, his small face set in a precocious mask of seriousness. His legs dangled from the edge of the plastic chair. On the other side of Jonathan, Kay sat less formally, as if the bulk of her pregnancy would permit no straight back, no properness of posture, no dignity of occasion other than its own blatant claim on attention. Kay was proud, but tired. Paul had already decided that there probably would be no more children after this. Kay was small, delicate, and much too important to him to risk.

The room in which they waited was too cold, its décor stark—plastic furniture, off-white and pale-blue walls, accompanied by darker blue carpet that absorbed sound. No one else was present. The last family had left twenty minutes ago. One of them had made fragile sobbing sounds which had managed to escape the unfortunate carpet. The remaining silence had made the long wait even more difficult to bear.

Across from Paul a set of double doors swung inward and Paul's heart struck hard once, twice, then calmed to normal as his father entered. At fifty-two, Eric Dover was in better shape than anyone else Paul knew, including himself. He walked with a long stride, arms slightly akimbo as if he were constantly ready to embrace. He wore jogging pants and a T-shirt. He looked supremely happy. When he saw Paul, his small blue eyes danced and his ever-present smirk grew to a full grin.

He hardly looks the grieving widower
, Paul thought and stood extending his hand. His father took it briefly, then laughed and pulled Paul into a hug. Paul endured in what he hoped was dignity until Eric let him.

Kay had gotten to her feet and eagerly accepted a less hearty hug from her father-in-law. Paul saw her eyes glistening and hoped she would not start crying.

Jonathan stood looking up at the big man he called “Gra'pa.”

“Well, now,” Eric said, regarding his grandson. “Why the long face? You keep that up you'll be just like your dad! You're too young to be so grim.” He squatted down so he was at eye level with the boy. “Do I get a hug from you?”

Jonathan stepped forward and reverently wrapped his small arms around Eric's neck. The solemnity the child gave to the act nearly erased the smile from Eric's face. Paul watched the tiny ritual with a sense of pride in his son that mitigated some of the absurdity Eric brought to the occasion. For an instant Eric's face changed. Paul thought he saw a tear form, the mouth turn down slightly, and perhaps a moment of regret. Paul blinked, and then Eric was hugging Jonathan and lifting him off the floor.

“God, you're getting big!”

The illusion that his father was treating the moment non-trivially vanished leaving Paul a bit confused as if he had tasted something he couldn't quite place. His father almost,
almost
, showed a sober emotion appropriate to what he was about to do.

“I appreciate you coming,” Eric said, setting Jonathan down. “I wouldn't want to do this without seeing you all one last time.”

“You'll see us again,” Kay said.

“Sure, but not like this. Hell, you'll both be my age when I wake up.”

“Dad—”

Eric shook his head. “Don't. We've already discussed it.”

Paul felt his mouth tighten. “But you're not even sick.” He tried to keep his voice steady, but he heard a plea in it anyway.

Eric's eyebrows went up. “I'm sick of this age, son. The world is dreary.”

“Who says it'll be any better in thirty years?”

“Maybe it won't. But it'll be different.” He shook his head. “I've made my decision.”

Paul glanced at Kay, then at Jonathan. No, this was not the time to have it out, not in front of Jonathan, not here in the waiting room of the cryotorium, not when everything was about to happen, not when Eric had set his sights on what he wanted. It was never a good time to have it out. What would be the point in any case? Eric always won.

Paul sighed. “There's time later.”

Eric nodded, but seemed uncertain for a moment. Paul studied the narrowing of eyes, the slight downward jerk of the brow, the hesitant set of the mouth—only a moment,
and then it was gone. These brief moments were the only times Eric actually seemed real to Paul.

“We can talk about it in thirty years,” Eric said and laughed.

“Why thirty years?” Kay asked.

“Why not?” Eric answered. “Actually, that's what they recommended. For some reason thirty is a break point. After that it goes up to fifty, then to a hundred. I didn't understand it. Fifty seemed too long, twenty didn't seem long enough.” He laughed again. “That left thirty.”

Paul looked toward the windows. Through the vertical blinds he saw the pleasant parkland thick with evergreens that surrounded the cryotorium. It had rained earlier, and the foliage seemed aglow: a latent vitality just beneath the surface of everything, unspoiled by choices. Paul thought of Jonathan that way—he had not made any mistakes yet, taken no wrong turns, everything good was still implicit in the child, frozen at a perfect moment. He wished he could keep it this way. Paul envied his son.

“Well,” Eric said, “you've got the house for the next thirty years. If you're in doubt about anything, just check the file labeled ‘Disposition' or ask my lawyer.”

He nodded, looked back at his father, and said, “You can depend on me.”

Eric patted Paul's shoulder. “I know.”

For another instant they locked eyes. Paul sensed the importance of the moment, a spark of connection between them rising out of Eric like a sphere of light drawing them together.
I should say something
, Paul thought, and a long list of things he wanted to say to his father scrolled through his mind. “I love you” was somewhere in the middle, but before he got to that particular line the bubble dissipated, the instant ended, and Eric smiled grimly and looked
away. Then he was hugging Kay and roughing Jonathan's hair, laughing once more.

“See you in thirty years,” he said loudly and walked away.

Paul watched him depart and felt his lips open, his tongue moving in the silent shaping of final words, unvoiced. Eric was through the doors; Paul felt his body jerk, as if a line had been attached to him and suddenly yanked free, and he took a single step forward.

“Let's go home,” Kay said.

They drove to the house in silence. Though Paul felt Kay's emotions like rising humidity, he did not want to say anything to color the day in an inappropriate shade.

As they pulled up the driveway, Paul considered the lazy way the house sprawled up the side of a low hill. It had taken his father and his Uncle Nathan years of work. Paul had fond memories of playing in its unfinished parts when he was a boy. The house had grown year by year until his mother's death. That had been the only time Paul remembered seeing his father somber.

For all of three or four months, Eric had not smiled, laughed, made a joke, or allowed anyone to lift his spirits. As Paul thought about it now, it seemed as though the man had concentrated all his grief into as short a time as possible, lived with it intimately, cloistered it and cultivated it, and paid attention to nothing else until it was all used up.