The Nail and the Oracle (34 page)

Then the screams began.

They were screams beyond sound, and surely only and immeasurable fraction of them reached Smith, so different were they in quality and kind from anything remotely human. Yet their echoes and their backlash seemed to blur the world for a moment of horror beyond imagining. A soundless, motionless quake, the terror of countless billions of frightful beings facing death and (unlike the millions who had perished here) knowing it, knowing why.

Smith’s skills knew as Smith himself could not, that the universe itself was relieved of a plague.

Was it a long time later? Probably it was—Smith was never able to remember that—when he stood up and filled his lungs with the dusty, sweet air and looked out on tomorrow and forever with clear and guiltless eyes.

He tested his power. It was intact.

He walked to the inner and outer barriers, kicking them down. He looked out at the sunlit ruins of the city.

If I live, he thought (and barring accident I can live forever), I can build it up again. I have magic; they gave it to me and no one can take it away. Magic and science, humanity and the Powers. It’s supposed to have worked that way long ago. It will again. Build it up again …

And if I don’t, if I fail, then at least I’ve fixed it so they have no enemies but themselves. Terrible as that might be, there are worse things.

He saw a flicker of movement in the distance, something feeble, hungry, misshapen, ragged.

The runesmith stepped out of the shadows, and walked toward the movement in the distance. There was sun now. For the first time. Because he wanted sun. And he wanted cool breezes. And the scent of good things in the air.

He could have it all now. They might never forgive him, but they could not harm him, and he would help them, as they had never been able to help themselves.

They were still alone, but perhaps it would be better now.

“Jorry!”

Dam
damn!
Jorry never said dam
damn
out loud; it was something that happened inside his head when he realized he couldn’t get away with whatever, or when it wasn’t going the way he wanted it to. “Yeh Mom.” How come she could hear him even when Pop had his head in the boob-tube with horses galloping and gunshots and all, every time?

Mom got up and stood in the door of the living room and looked at him as he stood at the bottom of the stairs where he had just stepped over the third step which squeaked and timed it with the big noise on the TV and all. She said, “You’re going out.”

“Well yeh.”

“You’re not going out.”

“It’s early.”

“Out till all hours, and where, and who with, I want to know.”

“It’s Friday.”

“Speak to your son.”

Without moving his eyes from the tube, Pop said, “What.”

Not a question, not an answer, just a flat statement “What.”

Mom said to Jorry, “You’re not going out.”

Up to now it was like wired-in with relays, the way a traffic light does no matter what, red to yellow, yellow to green, green to red again. If he wanted to he could make the whole thing go again: It’s early, out till all hours and where and who with, it’s Friday, speak to your son, what. So he tried the don’t-worry.

“Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be back early.”

“Early in the morning early, five o’clock in the morning,” Mom said. “With that addict Chatz.”

“Chazz,” he corrected. Chazz had a whole new thing with special
words: lid, joint, roach, weed, grass. “You smoke?” meant something brand new. Chazz lied a lot and Jorry had never seen him with anything, and if he acted funny once or twice well, hell, you didn’t need to blow a joint to learn that, you could learn it in the movies. Then yesterday Chazz said “I got a stash. You want?” and maybe it was a lie, but it scared Jorry like hell; he was real cool though: “Later, man.” Now he said to his mother, “Nothing the matter with Chazz.”

“With those eyes close together, round-shouldered,” Mom said. “I can tell. Whatever he’s taking now, even if he isn’t he will and it will lead to something worse. Or it’s that Jane.”

“Joan.” Dam
damn
. The instant he corrected her he knew she knew he had been thinking about pale parted hair and bright knowing laughter with some other guy, but with him a kind of
Finish your sentence, I got to go
even when all he said was hello. “That one,” said Mom, “will give you a disease. Speak to your son.”

“Wha-at. Wha-at.” Pop still didn’t take his eyes off the cowboys, but each “what” now had two syllables, and that meant he’d go into action if she gigged him once more.

“You’ll hang around that Stube.”

“Strobe,” he corrected her before he could stop himself. “They don’t have anything there, not even beer, only sodas and fruit juice.”

“You’re going to get killed riding around in that cheap flashy junkheap”—which was a hightailed Mustang with Shelby spoilers, oh wow—“which no man in his right mind would give to a retarded draft dodger like that Highball”—

“Highboy,” Jorry said faintly.

—“no matter how much money he has. Speak to your son.” Dam
damn
. Now everything depended on how it was with the cowboys. If Pop was locked in to this show, it would be short. If not, this could go on for hours and nobody was going no place.

“What.” Back to one syllable, but he yelled it, and he bounced out of the fat chair with a two-handed bang and came out of the living room, wattle-jawed, clamp-lipped, squinch-eyed. “Well what.”

Mom said, “He’s going out.” Pop said, “He’s going out?” Mom said, “He’s not going out.”

Pop said, “So go out, go out, a man has a right to work all day and come home and see one show all the way through.”

Good, good, the show was good, this would be short.

“Go, go,” Mom yelled, “Go to your creepy friends, never mind here where you get taken care of, eat the best food for your health, I work my fingers to the bone. Go.”

Jorry went, feeling funny like he always did when it went this way, getting his way, winning, but all the same like thrown out in the street, nobody cared enough. There is no word for a feeling like that. He went quickly but did not bump the door closed because sometimes that would bring Pop out on the porch, to make him come back. Behind him he could hear Mom starting in on Pop: how can I be his mother and his father all at the same time, he hasn’t got a father who cares enough to keep him in the house running around at all hours with those creepy kids, and Pop yelling “After! After!” meaning shut up while he sees his show.

Jorry got as far as Third without seeing anybody, and then from out of nowhere there was Specs, waiting for the light to change. Specs had real bad skin and shorter hair than anyone else but he was always around the action and knew everything. “Highboy got Libby,” was his greeting. Libby was a very unreachable chick; you see them carrying the flag at high-school assemblies and president of the Student Council and the honor roll and like that, and clean and kind and pretty and square, man, forget it. But with four hundred horsepower and a tach on the dash, Highboy gets Libby, vooming along dark roads anyplace for anything he wants, and back on time. “What else?” he said, and knew Specs understood him perfectly. The light changed and they walked across. Jorry stopped.

“Strobe,” said Specs, announcing and asking.

“Not now.” Jorry wasn’t sure why not now. Maybe it was not wanting to arrive at the place with Specs; you didn’t go anywhere with Specs, you found him there. And maybe it was wanting to be alone on a dark street for a while, to think about Libby on real leather next to you and the tach pushing up towards six, towards seven, towards someplace way out of town where nobody would know, and lots of time there and back early. Spec said, “Later, man,” and
walked. Jorry stood next to a high hedge and did his thing about the Mustang.

Maybe it took a while and maybe not; there’s no time in there, but what brought him back was
bang
on the sidewalk with a little plastic handbag that skittered lipstick and Tampax and a cracked compact and some change all out and around.

It was Joanie with the long pale hair falling away from the clean pink part. She didn’t see him and she said, “I don’t
care
.” Then she stood quite still for the longest time with her eyes closed. Jorry didn’t want to say anything while her eyes were closed, but then under the streetlamp he saw they were not closed tight enough to keep tears in, and the streaks on her face were like cracks in a doll if you put a light inside. So he picked up the handbag and touched her with it and said her name. She gasped and banged at the bridge of her nose with the back of her hand and looked at him. After a while she said, “Jorry,” and took the bag.

“I was just standing here,” was all he could say, and bent to pick up the compact and the Tampax. He found a quarter and a dime and straightened up. She held out the handbag, open, and he dumped the stuff into it and dropped the compact again. “Are you all right?”

She started to laugh in a way he didn’t like at all, but by the time he had dipped down and up for the compact he realized that she wasn’t laughing at him. It wasn’t even laughing. Whatever it was stopped abruptly and she did something no girl he had ever heard of had ever done; she took his hand and put it against her breast. Never in all his life had he felt anything so soft and alive and wonderful. She asked him in a soft, breathy voice, “Is there anything wrong with that?”

“Well, no,” was all he could say.

She lifted her hand away from his; it was up to him whether or not he left it on her. He dropped it away. His hand could still feel her; he had the crazy thought that it always would. She said, very slowly, “I have been so damn lonesome.”

He just shook his head a little. He hadn’t seen her around for a while but he couldn’t ever remember her looking lonesome. Not ever.

“Jorry—”

“What?”

She wet her lips. “You know where I live.”

“Well, yes.”

“Look, I’ve got something to do right now, but I’ll be home about eleven. There’s nobody there tonight. You come.”

“Well, I don’t—” His mouth was suddenly too dry to release another word.

“I mean,” she said, “I just don’t
care
.” He was hung on her eyes like a coat on a nail. “Please, Jorry.
Please
.”

“Well, all right,” he said, and she held him for a moment and then turned away; he thought his knees were going to buckle. He watched her walking away, long legs, long back, long hair all flogged by the shadows of tree trunks as she walked. “Oh wow,” he whispered.

After a while he walked slowly down Third, somehow aware as never before of the impact of heels on pavement, the press of toes, the smell of a lawn mowed that afternoon and a hint of cat pee and how sharp blue starspecks could pierce a small town’s Friday sky-glow. Then and there he didn’t feel any more like I’ll-have-to-ask-Mom Jorry, or they-won’t-let-me Jorry, or Jorry who was always on the outside looking in, or the inside looking on. “Man,” he said quietly to the nighttime, “you got to do your thing.” He was quoting somebody or other but he meant it. Then he was in the light, and who should be coming out of the candy store but Chazz.

Chazz had long green eyes and an eagle’s beak and no chin, and a funny way of coming up to you as if he was walking a little sidewise. Jorry called him. It seemed to make Chazz glad. “Hey man.”

Jorry made a c’mon motion with his head and walked away from lights and people and let Chazz catch up with him. They moved along for a moment and Joanie’s, “I don’t
care!
” popped into Jorry’s head. It made him grin a little and it made a pleasant cold vacuum appear in his solar plexus: fun-fear. He said, in a Chazz-sidewise kind of way, “About that stash.”

Pleased astonishment. Chazz banged his hands together once and smiled all around as if at an invisible audience in the dark, to whom
he said, “He’s with it, he’s with it.” He hit Jorry. “I about had you wrote off as a brownshoes.”

“Me.” Jorry knew how to use a question word as a flat statement. He liked how it came out. “Where’s this grass?”

Chazz released a sudden roar of laughter and shut it off. Full of glee, he looked all around and sidewised up close, and said in a half whisper, “Man, I been
looking
for you. I just didn’t know till now it was you.” He began walking purposefully, and Jorry strode along beside him, willing enough but a little puzzled. They got to the next streetlight and Chazz looked all around again. “Roll up your sleeve.”

“What?”

“Roll it up. I want to see something.”

Jorry started to think something and then didn’t want to think it. He rolled up his sleeve. Chazz grasped the biceps with both hands and squeezed and held on. Jorry tugged a bit, but Chazz held on, a great eagerness showing on his face. “What the hell you doing?”

“Shut up a minute,” said Chazz, and hung on. He was peering at the crook of Jorry’s elbow. Suddenly he released the arm. “Beautiful. Oh man, but beautiful.”

“Beautiful what.”

“Like that vein, it’s a piece of hose, man.”

“Chazz, what the hell you talking about?”

“Like you’re like me, man. Some cats, you can’t find it with an X-ray, but you and me, we got the gates wide open.”

Jorry tried out the words. “Chazz, if you’re holding we’ll smoke. If not we’ll Injun rassle or just forget it.”

Chazz again produced that cut-off blast of laughter that went on in silent glee. When he could he said, “Smoke! That shit can wait, man. I got us a trip, not a buzz. Like four, six hours at twenty thousand feet with the wind behind us.” He came close and whispered, “I got … speed.”

“Speed.”

There was a long pause. Jorry had the painful realization that I’ll-have-to-ask-Mom, They-won’t-let-me Jorry was maybe standing on a higher step, but he was still around. On the other hand, to have missed being a brownshoes by so close a margin, only to fall
right out of this fellowship and back into Squaresville—it was unthinkable. And besides—he was scared. Veins-Speed-God. His mouth was suddenly completely dry, which had the odd effect of reminding him of something. He worked up spit and swallowed hard before he could say, very carefully, “Oh hell, man, six hours. I got a date at eleven. I’m going to need everything I got.”