Slant (55 page)

/ SLANT 337

rigor of drug-induced death. Crest looks like any other man his age, a little better dressed, a touch impatient. Nothing worth making a fuss about. "I'm here," the image repeats. "Is there anything you need to ask me? I'm dynamic, they tell me some of my memories are here. Please don't waste time." He chuckles. "This machine, if it is a machine, has lots to do." "Do you know him?" Nathan asks Mary. "No," Mary says. "How do you turn this off?" "There's not much left. Just these patterns. If you flip these switches, we pull the remaining INDAs off line, and since that fellow with the pick destroyed the memory backups, it will all fade." Mary reaches for the switches. "I'm waiting," says Crest, the image of Crest, the last, almost living part of a dead man. "Do you mind?" Mary asks Nathan, fingers poised. She does not know whether she can stay on her feet much longer. "Not at all," Nathan says. "There's nothing I need here. She's gone." Mary flips the switches, and the image folds into a lattice of glowing lines, the lattice collapses, and it is all gone.

"The others are dead," Jonathan says. He tells them what he knows. Exhaustion leaves him feeling like a zombie. Mary records his words carefully and tells him that Marcus Reilly has been taken out of the building for treatment. Helena Daniels sits beside them in the circular room filled with old computers. Her pad is also set to record. Nathan Rashid stands near the middle of the room, looking like a man who has lost everything. He finally sits on a narrow bench near the exit. Jonathan looks at Mary with heavy-lidded eyes. "What time is it?" he asks. "It's four in the morning," Mary tells him. "It's tomorrow," he says. "I should have been home hours ago. I have to talk to my kids..." He points vaguely around the room, trying to find something obvious, something representative. "Is anybody going to do anything about this?" His finger ends up pointing at Mary's face. "I hope so," she says. She packs up her pad and stands on wobbly legs. She has reached her limit. "I have to leave." "Finally," Daniels says. "There are medevac helicopters from Boise and Seattle outside." Mary looks down on Jonathan where he sits on the bench, hunched over. "Did you want all this?" she asks him. "I don't know what I wanted," he answers. "Not this." "All right," Mary says, and turns to go. Her legs fail her and she holds out her bleeding hands for balance. Jonathan is the first to reach her, and helps her down slowly. Medical arbeiters are summoned and bring in a stretcher,

338

Martin Burke, surrounded by county deputies and several medical personnel from Moscow's largest hospital, hands his sealed flask to Torres and helps Mary arrange herself.

"I'll be leaving soon myself," he says.

"Can anybody fix us?" Mary asks him, and for the first time he sees more

than just concern or duty in her eyes. There's fear and pain.

"Yes," he says, though he really does not know.

Jonathan has dropped back to the bench again, and Martin sits beside him. "What a mess," Martin says.

"What's in this?" Torres asks, holding the flask out at arms length. "The best I could do for a sample," Martin says.

"Shit," Torres says, and places the flask carefully in a sealed bag, handing it to the nameless, broad-shouldered agent. In turn, he passes it to a man in a full body suit, who packs it in a sealed metal case.

"Sorry," Martin says to no one in particular. "Best I could do."

They all sit or stand in silence, as the room fills with officials, the sheriff, longsuited members of President Kemper's staff. They owlishly watch the technical and medical people parade by.

Martin wonders how many helicopters and airplanes have landed in Moscow in the last hour.

"What are you going to do with Seefa Schnee?" Jonathan asks Torres. "How the hell should I know?" Torres responds. "And Marcus, the Aristos?" Torres shrugs. "Me?"

Torres simply looks at him.

stares at to that touch. To my family."

Jonathan

the

floor.

need

make

Torres hands him his pad. "Go ahead," he says. "Direct to a satlink. It's on us."

Daniels listens to a voice on her own pad, and then shouts, "Fifteen minutes. Jesus Christ!" She whirls on the nameless agent. "What is this? What is this fifteen minutes shit?"

"Orders, I guess," he says flatly. He shrugs; he's not in the loop on this part of the action.

Daniels shakes her fists. "Goddamn it all to fucking hell!"

Martin wonders if she is going to be afflicted, as well. His lips move in sympathy. He is about to start snorting and barking when Daniels shouts, "Everybody out of here, now. NOW!"

They barely make it before the real fireworks begin.

From her supine position in the helicopter, Mary has her last look at Omphalos. The craft banks west and flakes of snow swirl in its wash. A medical arbeiter

/ SLANT 339

The pyramid is crossed with searchlight beams. The surrounding snow- covered grounds are packed with cars and trucks and helicopters. People pour from the garage opening on the south side. Something flashes like a gunshot and Mary jumps in surprise. "Please keep still," the medical arbeiter tells her. On Omphalos's corrugated face, flames erupt in brilliant patches like wild roses in the night. Pieces of the building fly outward. Lines of bright sparks carve a blackened groove near the base. The helicopter is leveling and she just catches a glimpse of the pyramid's tip collapsing, followed by the levels beneath, like falling blocks in a child's toyroom. The sound reaches her as & run of staccato punches overlaying the chopper noise. Night fills the window. Mary feels the sedation kick in. She's out of everything for now. Nussbaum couldn't possibly expect any more. Never in her life has she felt this weak, this reduced. Still, she smiles pityingly into the dim red lights of the cabin. She isn't going to be around to help Torres and Daniels work with the sheriff or Kemper. She won't be able to fulfill that part of the bargain. Night fills the window. The lights in the cabin dim. The long, whispering shimmy of the helicopter lulls her. She sleeps.

340 GR pounds BEAR

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"Mary?"

It's early in the morning, and Alice thought she heard someone walking around. She peers into Mary's bedroom, bed made up, neat and empty. She knocks on the bathroom door, no answer, pads barefoot to the end of the hall and the small catch-all room. An old electronic sewing machine sits on a table in one corner and stacks of cardboard boxes slump half-hidden behind a closet door.

The house monitor has been turned off. "Mary?" she calls with more concern as she enters the living room. The front door is locked from the inside. She feels a small puff of cold air. The glass door to the porch is open a crack, but it is dark outside. Biting her lower lip, Alice slides the door open.

Mary stands on the balcony in the freezing cold wind, naked, shivering. "My god, Mary, what are you doing?"

"I am so ugly," Mary says through chattering teeth. "I just want to be clean." For a moment, Alice wonders if Mary's monitor recharge has somehow gone wrong, and Mary is suffering a mental collapse. She doesn't think about this long, however; she steps out in her nightgown and grabs Mary's shoulders and pulls her back into the house. Mary is pliant as a doll. They sit in the living room.

"How could they hate me so much?" Mary asks. "I was an ugly child. I didn't want to be ugly."

"You weren't ugly," Alice says soothingly. "I've seen the pictures. You showed them to me. Remember?"

"I wanted to be strong and useful and valuable. I wanted to look strong and be beautiful."

"Yes, so?" Alice asks, feeling completely out of her depth. She has only just approached her own threshold of stability in the last couple of days. She's not

sure she's strong enough to help her friend if things are as bad as they seem. "You've been beautiful all your life," Mary says, looking at Alice. Alice shakes her head defensively. "Look what it's got me!"

"What's it like never to have to worry about whether someone will value you, or want to look at you, or find you desirable?"

Alice looks at Mary squarely: at the face still marred by deep pocks and blemishes, at the ridged breasts only now assuming their balance, at the scarred legs. She wants to cry. Mary the uncrackable. Mary the enigma, all dignity and perseverance, who does not judge me.

"What's it like to be beautiful inside?" Alice asks Mary sharply, as if in retaliation for a slap. She stands, sees the robe discarded in the kitchen, picks

342 GREG BEAR

"Oh, I am not that," Mary says emphatically. "I have so much anger and resentment!" She raises her hands in clenched fists, shaking them at the ceiling. This seems to break the tension and she reverses the fists, opens them, stares at the scarred palms and swollen fingers. Then she closes her eyes. "Why did they want to make me ugly again?"

"I don't know," Alice says, biting off the words. "I don't understand anything or anyone." She sits beside Mary and cradles the woman's head on her

breasts. "I know there are hateful people. People who hate us, you, me." "But they never even knew us," Mary says.

Alice keeps stroking Mary's hair. Gradually, the tone comes back into Mary's muscles, the supple control that Alice has never seen relaxed and withdrawn until now. Mary sits up slowly, composes herself.

"Out of nowhere," she says, swallowing back her emotions.

"I don't understand," Alice says.

"You never hear the bullet that's going to get you. It comes out of nowhere. I never imagined this."

They sit beside each other in the warm shadows of the living room. The wind makes small pushing noises against the windows and walls, blows past the doors. Winter is heavy this January morning, and the temperatures are down to the low teens.

Mary closes her eyes and leans back on Alice's shoulder. "I thought I was helping you," Mary says.

Alice rests her arm lightly on Mary, pats her forearm. She has never in her life felt protective or maternal, not even when she was being dutiful to such perennial victims as Twist. Yet Mary makes her feel maternal.

"Worst Christmas we've ever had," Alice says. "Keeps everybody indoors,

is madness bit."

Mary laughs and lifts her head to look at Alice. She gives another laugh, a small snort, half-concealed by her hand.

"Shopping down by seventy percent," Alice continues. "Old King Midas gets a rest."

"Merchants disappointed," Mary says, a little hoarsely.

"Happy New Year," Alice says. Her tone shifts and her voice cracks. "Don't ever envy beauty. It's like envying the rich. The rich reach out with their scythes and cut you loose and bundle you up with the other beauties, the other things they want, then they stack you in a row in their houses, and burn you in great big bonfires."

It's Mary's turn to be puzzled. "What?" She rubs her eyes and then says, "Ow," having opened up a render ridge on her eyelid. Alice dabs at the wound lightly with the sleeve of her nightgown.

"Just something popped into my head," Alice says. "A lesson I've never learned."

"You are beautiful, though," Mary says. "Really beautiful. That xhoa[d bring

/ SLANT 343

They regard each other with somber faces again, and suddenly returns the snorting laughter, the shared release, the collapsing into hugs and laughing until tears come. They cry a little, and Mary says, "I feel better, I think." "Good," Alice says. "You look so strong now," Mary tells her. Alice listens to her mind, hears only a distant cacophony of disapproval, of uncertainty, and none of the imp of the perverse. "I'm not great, just okay," she says. "I suppose that's an improvement. What about you?" "I'm finally beginning to grow up," Mary says. "Nobody can make little machines to help me do that." "Don't grow up too much," Alice says. "Why not?" "Don't become like them." "Never like them," Mary agrees. Mary's PD pad chimes. It's a direct, not through the house monitor. Mary instinctively reaches to the side of the couch for her pouch and the pad. "XVait," Alice says, grabbing her shoulder. "You sure you're up to it?" After due consideration, Mary says, "Yes. Thank you." She opens the pad and takes the touch. It's Nussbaum. "How's the healing?" he asks. "Please say you're better." Mary makes a face. "I'm still ugly," she says defiantly. Nussbaum says, "I don't care. All hell is waiting to be packed and shipped. We need you." "Give me a few more days," Mary says. "You sound strong, Choy." "I told you, I'm ugly." "I told you I don't give a shit," Nussbaum says. Then, "How are your feet?" "They're fine," Mary says. "Good," Nussbaum says. "There's PD work, never done, no rest for the wicked." 'I'll think about it," Mary says. "Please do. Everybody's concerned, Fourth Choy. Mary. I beg you. Get your pretty feet down here." "Screw you, sir." Nussbaum smiles broadly. Mary cuts the touch and squeezes the pad back into its pouch. She takes a deep breath. "Do you like him?" Alice asks. "What's not to like?" Mary says. "I mean, it's one in the morning," Alice says. "He's just showing me he cares," Mary says, and stands. She takes Alice's hand. "You'll be okay, if I go?" "Francis says I'm going to be heat made flesh. So famous, in the news. He wants me up front, not just backmind." Alice raises her arms, clasps her hands