The Philosopher's Apprentice (30 page)

Colonel Fox stared at the vaulted ceiling and muttered, “Fuck this.” The tin walls replayed her words, turning her throwaway epithet into a malediction.

General Snow glowered at the Valkyrie and said, “In other words, your people will be at a safe distance when the conflagration starts.”

“Conflagration?” said Yolly, who'd evidently not spent much time mulling over the implications of the gasoline trucks parked outside the city.

“Conflagration,” General Snow repeated, rolling the word around on his tongue like a cherry stone.

A hush descended. The stillness held dominion for two full minutes. Wordless dialogue balloons hovered here and there throughout the hut.

“What makes you think we won't stand our ground?” Londa asked, digging into her thumb with the nail of her index finger.

Major Snow issued a toothy immaculoid smirk. His diseased mouth suggested an encounter between a piano keyboard and a sledgehammer. “If it's a fight you want, Dr. Sabacthani, we'll gladly give you one. But remember that every mackie will be dead of his infirmities within the week. You'd be battling the very legions of despair.”

“We have guns,” Colonel Fox noted.

“We have more guns,” countered General Snow.

“We have the high ground,” Colonel Fox asserted.

“We have the howitzers,” General Snow said.

“We have the wisdom of experience.”

“We have the lethality of innocence.”

“We have esprit de corps.”

“We have nothing to lose.”

A second silence came, during which I contemplated General John Snow 4099. Beyond his programmed frown, lazy eye, and immaculoid pocks, I caught glimpses of the handsome face he might have owned had his godfather been Charnock and not some incompetent CHALICE technician. His heritage, I decided, was heterogeneous. Several months earlier, a comely Asian soul had connected with an attractive human of Caucasian descent. I imagined that the two of them truly loved each other and might eventually bring forth several splendid children who would all make a sincere effort to forgive their late pyromaniacal semibrother.

“We suggest that between now and sunrise you gather together any possessions of sentimental value,” said Captain Snow.

“Unlike our curette-happy parents, we are not heartless,” said Major Snow. “We shall permit you to retain whatever photographs,
tchotchkes, and liberal-intellectual spider plants you keep on your desks.”

“No weapons, of course”—General Snow threw Colonel Fox a gloating glance—“no pistols, no rifles, those all stay behind, likewise your laptops, cell phones, PDAs, iPods, hard drives, and storage media. You'll be strip-searched and X-rayed, so there's no point trying to smuggle any computer chips past our guard.”

Londa went after her hangnail with a vengeance, peeling away a quarter-inch scroll of skin. She was trembling now, and not from the cold.

“If you won't allow us any CD-Rs,” Colonel Fox said, training her laser gaze on General Snow, “then shut off your electromagnetic pulse for a couple of hours so we can send our files over the Web.”

“You don't seem to understand,” the immaculoid commander replied. “When the city burns down, all of your unscriptural initiatives must burn down with it.”

“Unscriptural initiatives?” Dagmar gestured wildly in the direction of Themisopolis. “Do you have any idea what sort of data we've got back there?”

For the next several minutes, she expounded upon two enterprises Londa had mentioned during my first visit to the city, Project Xelcepin, aimed at producing an ovarian-cancer treatment of unprecedented efficacy, and Operation Velvet Fist, a full-bore assault on the international sexual-slavery trade. Both of these breakthroughs were girded by digital information. Apropos of Xelcepin: the complex protocols for administering the drug and the recent results of a double-blind trial. Concerning the prostitution rings: the secret identities and hidden lairs of more than one hundred slave traffickers, plus the locations of several dozen churches and private homes where the exploited women could seek sanctuary right before the U.N. made its move. Precious data, priceless facts, all of them still awaiting exportation beyond the walls of Themisopolis.

“We're okay with wiping out ovarian cancer, and on the whole
your antiprostitution campaign sounds like a good thing,” General Snow said. “What worries us is the
other
data you'd like to carry out of here.”

“What other data?” Dagmar demanded.

“Don't be coy,” General Snow said. “We know that Project Xelcepin is a front for the scheme that
really
matters to you, the development of…what's it called?”

“Nildeum,” Major Snow said.

“Nildeum,” echoed General Snow. “The breakfast cereal additive that makes children stop believing in God.”

“This meeting has outrun its usefulness,” Yolly observed.

“It's time we took leave of these clowns,” Colonel Fox concurred, squeezing Londa's arm.

My vatling made no response. She simply ripped away her hangnail and regarded the far wall with the sort of glassy stare Henry Cushing's young audiences had doubtless accorded
Professor Oolong's Oompah-pah Zoo.

“And we also know what you're
really
designing at the Vision Syndicate,” Captain Snow said.

“The automotive fuel whose secret ingredients are corn oil and menstrual blood,” Major Snow said.

“We've worked out the implications,” General Snow said.

“We're no dummies,” Captain Snow said.

“Once women realize they can sell their menstrual blood for thousands of dollars, they'll try to produce as much of the stuff as possible,” Major Snow said.

“We're talking about de facto infertility,” Captain Snow said. “Diaphragms, IUDs, condoms—whatever it takes.”

“We're out of here,” Yolly said.

“You people won't rest until every oil company in America has gone bankrupt,” General Snow said, “and pregnancy has become a thing of the past.”

 

A HEAVY SNOW
was falling when we left the mackie headquarters and started back toward the city, though I doubted that the flakes would be sufficiently large, wet, or plentiful to insulate Themisopolis from the coming inferno. Midway through our return journey, Londa stopped walking, as if she'd acquired the plaster flesh and steel bones of Alonso the Conquistador, but she managed to communicate her immediate wishes through clipped phrases and spasmodic gestures. We carried her, literally carried her, to my room in Arcadia House. At first she simply sat on the mattress, grinding her molars and wringing her hands, but finally she spoke, telling her manager to have the city's administrators and division heads assemble in an hour at the Institute for Advanced Biological Investigations.

Not long after Dagmar's departure, the immaculoids' chanting and drumming started up again. Londa cast her livid gaze first on Colonel Fox, then on Yolly, and finally on me.

“The strategy session that matters isn't the one I just arranged,” she said. “It's the one that's going to happen right now.”

By scouring the paramedics' station, Yolly managed to scare up everything we needed for a tea party—Earl Grey, chai, lemon, sugar, biscotti—not a merry Donya sort of tea party, but the grimmest such gathering imaginable. As the tea bags steeped, Colonel Fox took out her PDA and began working the keyboard with her ballpoint pen, the point striking the membrane with the precise pistoning action of a sewing-machine needle as she summoned crucial statistics to the miniature screen.

“Monday afternoon, as soon as I saw those swarms of mackies, I started running the numbers,” she said. “Our present civilian population is three thousand seventeen. I immediately subtracted the orphans and pregnant teens, also the zombie troupers—there's no time to reprogram them for defilade—which gave me a hypothetical fighting force of two thousand and fifty-eight, including professional staff and maintenance workers. Next I conducted an informal survey and learned that about a third of those potential defenders, six
hundred and eighty-five, are prepared to take up arms and hold the fort. Naturally we can count on total commitment from my Valkyries.”

“That's maybe nine hundred against six thousand,” Yolly concluded, aghast.

Colonel Fox lifted a biscotto and set it between her teeth like a cigar stub. “Not great odds, I grant you. But we can still win. The minute the fetuses draw blood, they'll lose public support. Even Governor Winthrop won't dare say it's just another antiabortion demonstration. He'll have to send the National Guard to our rescue.”

“Unless the immaculoids have already massacred us,” Yolly observed.

“And here's another factor in our favor.” Colonel Fox flipped an insouciant hand in the general direction of the mackie encampment. “Those are pretty unhealthy creatures out there. I doubt that they can shoot straight.”

“You heard General Snow,” Yolly protested. “Their despair makes them abnormally dangerous.”

“With all due respect, Yolly,” Colonel Fox said, “never employ the enemy's propaganda in assessing the enemy's strength.”

Londa arced her thumb and middle finger into the shape of calipers, using the instrument to massage her temples. She lifted her head and fixed on the Valkyrie commander. “You make a compelling case for manning the walls.” She climbed off the mattress and presented me with a meandering grin. “Nevertheless, I've decided to follow the advice of my morality teacher. Go ahead, Mason. Tell me what to do.”

“You're dumping the decision in
my
lap?” I said.

“I'm confident you can rise to the occasion.”

“This isn't fair.”

“Sorry, Socrates,” Londa said. “I'm responsible for Themisopolis, and you're responsible for me. You knew it might one day come
to this. Take a posh job tutoring a gumbo girl for a hundred dollars an hour, and eventually there'll be hell to pay.”

My body, it seemed, had become fused with some sinister machine, its gyroscopes spinning in my aorta, its meshed gears nibbling at my stomach. I swallowed some tea and studied the paint-by-numbers tableau over my dresser: Jesus holding up a potential and soon-to-be-proverbial projectile, the famous unthrown first stone, inviting the vigilantes to contemplate its fearsome solidity, even as they took stock of their soggy souls.

“I've always liked that story.” I gestured toward the painting. “It cuts through a lot of nonsense.”

“Mason used to have us act it out,” Londa told Colonel Fox. “He played the mob leader. My friend Brittany was the adulteress, and I was—”

“Let me guess,” Colonel Fox said scornfully. “You were the rock.”

“It's not generally known that Jesus had encountered a similar situation the week before—same adulteress, different mob,” I said, improvising wildly. “Only he didn't intervene. He just stood and watched as a passing Pharisee told the vigilantes, ‘Let all the sinners gathered here start stoning the woman, while the flawless among you undertake to defend her.' So the mob broke into two groups, pelters and protectors, and soon the stones were flying every which way. When the dust settled, all the pelters lay dead, but no protector had received so much as a lump on the head. And the Pharisee said, ‘What a glorious outcome—the defeat of the vengeful.' And Jesus asked him, ‘What if the protectors had been slaughtered instead?' And the Pharisee replied, ‘That, too, would have been glorious—the martyrdom of the righteous.' And Jesus said, ‘We can do better than that.'”

“Listen to your conscience,” Yolly implored her sister. “We have to make a strategic retreat.”

“If we don't fight, we'll lose the data,” Colonel Fox said with equal urgency.

“Remember how you programmed Joan of Arc?” I asked Londa. “‘There are no just wars. There are no greater goods.'”

“No just wars,” Yolly echoed.

“A miracle drug for ovarian cancer,” Colonel Fox said. “The end of sexual slavery.”

Londa approached the dresser and stared into the mirror. Whether by serendipity or intention, her reflected eyes lay along the same horizon as the lush blue Protestant orbs of the Jewish rabbi.

“It's really no contest, is it?” she said.

“None at all,” I replied.

“Mason, you earned every penny of that hundred dollars an hour,” Yolly said.

“You've got a coward for a conscience,” Colonel Fox told her boss.

“By this time tomorrow,” Londa said, “we'll all be out of here, no massacre, no martyrs, not one life squandered, and I'll be wishing I was dead.”

 

I LAY AWAKE
for many hours, perhaps the entire night—certainly no dream came: no alligator feedings with John Snow 0001, no sea urchin rescues with Donya. Dawn found me thrashing around amid my blankets like the reanimated Lazarus struggling against his winding-sheet. I summoned my remaining strength and staggered to the dresser, where I studied the play of the morning sunbeams on the Gospel canvas. In this light, the adulteress and her Nazarene advocate seemed positively beatific, painted not by numbers but by numinosity.

I scrambled into my clothes and packed my overnight bag, whereupon the Sisters Sabacthani appeared, Yolly looking haggard and jumpy, Londa maintaining an uneasy détente among her warring selves. Each woman had brought along a small valise, and Londa also carried a birdcage. Its outraged occupant, Quetzie, repeatedly poked an indignant snout through the bars.

“Tell me this isn't happening,” Yolly said. “Tell me it's all a mumquat dream.”

“It's happening,” I said.

The instant the mackies issued us a cell phone, Londa explained, we would call Jordan and have her retrieve us from the state park. Apparently Londa's decision to surrender Themisopolis, which she'd represented as “my former morality teacher's decision to surrender Themisopolis,” had been well received by the medical and research personnel, who'd hastened to point out that they'd signed on to practice healing and pursue knowledge, not to cross swords with fetuses. Several Valkyries, custodians, and groundskeepers had volunteered to stay behind and wage guerrilla war against the arsonists, but Londa had told them, “I don't want your blood on my conscience, and I don't want it on my conscience's conscience either.” Of all the creatures in our care, only the zombie troupers would not be joining the retreat. They were mere enfleshed machines, after all, insensate as sock puppets, and by Londa's account they had opted to remain in the city and allow the mackie flames to end their meaningless programmed lives.