Watson, Ian - Novel 10 (6 page)

 
          
“But
there’s another sort of hide, Jim.” Weinberger glanced up at the dead camera,
mounted under the ceiling. “That’s the photographer’s hide — to snap the bird
of death on the wing. I wasn’t just going to build a tripwire camera, though.
Oh no, I was a good deal more ambitious than that! I was going to build a cage
— to trap that bird and hold it. I know how to do it, Jim. I got started, too.
I almost finished. I can build ... a cage for Death.”

 
          
A Cage for Death.

 
          
“You’ll
have to give me time to think about that one, Nathan.”

 
          
“Be
my guest,” said Weinberger smugly — smug in the certainty that Jim could never
accept the notion?

 
          
Obviously,
if Jim resisted it, this would only serve to reinforce Weinberger’s fantasy. On
the other hand, if Jim encouraged it much further at this moment, it might well
bloom hysterically — giving Weinberger a massive set-back.

 
          
“It’s
a lot to take in at once.”

 
          
“Oh,
it is.”

 
          
Too,
Weinberger might feel that he had shown his whole hand prematurely. Then he
would resent Jim bitterly.

 
          
“I’d
rather like to check the literature for anything on the death pheromone.”

 
          
“You
won’t find a thing. I never did. I had to figure it all out myself.”

 
          
“There
could have been some hint, some minor
insight, that
cropped up since you left the House.
Something that didn’t
warrant announcing or publicising because it couldn’t be properly demonstrated.
There may be a record of it in Central Data.”

 
          
“Do
you honestly imagine anybody else even
guessing
there was a pheromone to look for?”

 
          
“I
think it’s unlikely.”

 
          
“I’ll
tell you why you won’t find anything new. It’s rather important to decide the
precise time of death, right? That’s why you monitor the ‘thanatos’ rhythm —
which
I'd
say is linked to the
pheromone output, but I don’t have the equipment to prove it. . . If anyone
else had found out about the pheromone, you’d all be using that method
routinely now! All it requires is a chemi-sniffer, sensitive to one part per
billion. I rejigged one of the industrial ones — dead easy.” Weinberger
grinned triumphantly.

 
          
“Since
you do know how to use this method, wouldn’t it have been a nice idea to share
your discovery with the Houses?”

 
          
“What?
So that Death could feed on the dying even more efficiently? You must be
joking. There’s only one use that I’d see the pheromone method put to. That’s
as bait —”

 
          
“In a cage.
For Death.”

 
          
“Right.
Tell the Houses?
Goodness me.”

 
          
‘But
you’ve told me,* thought Jim. Was Weinberger just too crazy to care, now? Or
too bitterly disappointed? Or did he feel a need to
confess
? Yes, that was it, decided Jim. Weinberger needed to
confess. It was good to confess. And Jim was someone whom he felt he could
safely confess to.

 
          
“Even
so, I'll check the literature. You never know.”

 
          
“Oh,
I do. It's you who don't know.”

 
          
In common with everybody else.

 
          
Jim
returned to
his room right away and
switched on the TV set. Dialling Central Data over the telephone link, he added
his guide code in case he was seeking restricted information.

 
          
He
regularly used his guide code to call up taboo literature featuring death. To
begin with, this had simply been part of his training. Later, to guide
difficult clients in Gracchus he had occasionally sought material for way-out
therapy from this source. And, yes, for
his own
interest. He supposed that most guides did the same.

 
          
Outside
the Houses of Death nobody seemed to regret the missing literature or object to
the computer-adjusted versions. Yet Jim wondered whether some people actually
volunteered as guides out of purely aesthetic motives, just to gain access to
morbid, forbidden texts. In medieval times only inquisitors — or whatever they
were called — could be trusted to read books on the
Index Expurgatorius.
Perhaps that was why the keenest minds had
tended to end up in the old Church . . .

 
          
If
such cupboard dilettantes tried to become guides these days, surely their
hypno-analysis should screen them out. Those supposed ‘aesthetic' motives would
actually be wickedly erotic ones — for the only real pornography was violence
and its counterpart, the dread of death.

 
          
‘My
record's
reasonably clean,' he thought sadly, ‘except
for Mike's death in Gracchus. Was that really my fault? I merely overlooked
the fact that he was actually dying, not just pretending to be.’
A very fine distinction.

 
          
‘Yes,
it
was
my fault — as much as
his,
and he’s not here to blame. Someone who really knew how
to read the
thanatos
rhythms should have been on
hand.’

 
          
Poor
old Mike: with his red hair, now turned to ash, and his impish chuckle, and his
yearning for the beyond, where he had arrived — or not arrived — so
unexpectedly . . .

 
          
Despite
his slight unfamiliarity with the technical medical index Jim was fairly sure
within ten minutes that nothing whatever was known about a ‘pheromone of death’.
To be positive, he typed instructions for a ‘clever search’ on the touch-pad
atop the TV set.

 
          
This
kind of computer search was not so much clever as painstaking — and
time-taking. A further ten minutes passed before the screen flashed for Jim’s
attention. The upshot of the search was precisely one item of computer
graffiti, which some sick-minded enemy of the Houses must have programmed into
the system once.

 
          
‘
death
stinks,’
read
the screen.

 
          
For
a moment Jim wondered whether Nathan Weinberger could somehow be responsible.

 
          
Hardly!
Weinberger would have typed in,
‘dying
people stink.*
Weinberger had said that he saw Death out of the corner of
his eye, not that he smelled it out of the side of his nose. Presumably Death
itself was odourless.

 
          
Jim
queried the touch-pad.

 
          
‘
no
further
record.’

           
He cleared the screen. Naturally
there was nothing about a pheromone of death; for the simple reason that there
wasn’t one.

 
          
Jim
paced. After a while the vista of Egremont beyond the sharp leaves and blood
flowers reminded him that he ought to visit the Peace Office — the Octagon, as
they called it here — to register. His schedule for these first few days was
flexible — apart from the Weinberger affair — to let him find his bearings and
fit in chores like this.

 
          
While
he was down at the Octagon, perhaps he should ask a few discreet questions
about Weinberger? Without, of course, implying that the House needed any
advice . . .

 
          
He
decided to catch some lunch on the way there.
A visit to the
fabled Three Spires Restaurant, perhaps?
No — he wanted to save that
experience up.

 
          
* * *

 
          
After
walking for fifteen minutes, he chose a small sandwich bar. Half a dozen pine
stools lined the counter, and there were just two tables. A couple of
middle-aged men sat at one of these, over beers, saying nothing at all to each
other, which was perhaps their most intimate way of communicating. Four women
were munching doughnuts and drinking coffee at the other. The bar itself was
decorated with resort pennants. Either its owner was privileged to travel,
which seemed unlikely, or else he was a collector of such ephemera. Perhaps he
had simply bought the pennants as a job lot from some shop furnisher.

 
          
Only
two stools were vacant at the bar. Jim slipped in between a fat, bearded
negro
, and a bald old fellow with unusually large ears. Jim
glanced at the old man, amused. As his frame had shrunk with age, so had his
ears
grown.
His card must be coming up soon at the Census
Office. Perhaps he had grown those ears to alert him to that moment, Jim
thought whimsically.

 
          
He
ordered smoked ham on rye and a small beer from the lady of the house, who was
wearing what she perhaps thought of as a smart chiffon and lace blouse;
unfortunately it looked more like part of a nightdress.

 
          
Inevitably,
now that a guide had arrived, talk at the bar turned to the topic of the
murder.

 
          
The
negro
was first in.

 
          
“So
you’re a guide, eh? You didn’t do much guiding of that berserker up at the
House yesterday.’’

 
          
“We
do our best,’’ said Jim evenly. “There was a time when an incident of that sort
was so
ordinary
you wouldn’t even
have mentioned it. What kind of world was that?’’

 
          
“Oh, a world on the skids.
I guess we’re just animals with brains
too big for our own good. But now the animal trainers are in charge, right? So
how did that nut get out of his cage?”

 
          
Jim
sipped beer.

 
          
“He
was the exception that proves the rule.’’

 
          
The
old fellow’s head swung round, as though operated by the crinkled dishes of his
ears.

 
          
“Do
you know what that saying really means, guide? What it means
is,
that the exception
tests
the rule —
to see if it’s okay, to see if it’s worth anything.
Or if
it’s just a phoney rule.
That’s the real meaning — the old meaning — and
I’m sticking by it. And when my time comes I’m sticking by what I know. Like,
for instance, death is shit.”

 
          
“Charlie,”
said the nightdress lady sharply. “The work of the Houses is a blessing.”

 
          
“If
some people feel as Charlie does, it’s understandable,” said Jim.

 
          
“Oh,
you’re such an understanding lot up there! Understand a man to death, you
will.”

 
          
The
negro
laughed. “Well, nobody could ever understand
you, Charlie! You belong in some other world.”

 
          
“And
they’ll make darn sure they send me there.”

 
          
“They
daren’t send
you
anywhere. Guiding
you would be like trying to guide a bull through a china shop.
By the ear!”

 
          
“You’ve
had one too many, Charlie,” said the lady.

 
          
“I
have
not.”
Charlie continued to sit
defiantly, taking root in his stool.

 
          
The
negro
nudged Jim in the ribs. “Anyway, apart from this
old fossil we’re all on your side. It’s just that you let the side down a bit
yesterday, hey? It’s like our best player missing the catch. The other side won
that one: the old enemy of us all.
The enemy of my kids.
And yours.”

 
          
“Right.”
Jim bit into his sandwich.

 
          
“But
you guides don’t have kids, do you? You must get kind of lonely.”

 
          
Still
chewing, Jim said, “There are compensations.
Friends.”
(Such as Mike Mullen . . .?)
“The
sense that you’re healing the world.
And bringing
people peace and joy.
Fulfilling them.”

 
          
“How
about lady guides?” asked Charlie
wickedly.
“I hope I
get one of those. She’ll have to persuade
me.
. .
quite touchingly. ”

 
          
“You’re
being disgusting,” said the nightdress lady. She leaned across the bar,
squashing her breasts tight against the chiffon. “And you guides retire earlier
than most other people — some of whom we could quite well do without! I think
you’re saints.”

 
          
“Thanks,”
said Jim. He raised his glass to her. “We’re just people, as you see.”

 
          
“And
people like to have a drink. It’s so
good
to see you here.” She beamed. “Your next beer’s for free. You might say it’s on
the House.”

 
          
“And
you’re very welcome up at the House, any time there’s a seminar,” said Jim
chivalrously.
“Even if we do only serve coffee.”

 
          
“Yeah,
we saw Barnes saying how we should go up there more often,” remarked the
negro
. “Is that what you’re doing in town? Delivering
invitations?”

 
          
“Me?
I’m off to the Octagon, to register. I just arrived in Egremont yesterday.”

 
          
The
negro
looked crestfallen. “And here’s me sounding off
at you about what happened! Damn it all, I’m sorry. What’s your name?”

 
          
“Jim.”

 
          
“Mine’s
Alec. I’ll buy the next one.”

 
          
With
four beers under his skin, Jim carried on to the Octagon.

 
          
As
he walked across the gravel courtyard towards the grand portico, he ran his
hand through one of the standard bay trees, rattling the leaves, a few of which
fell off. The marble statues watched him blankly.

 
          
Along
the architrave ran the gilded inscription:
pax
vobiscum
— ‘Peace Be With
You
.’ Composing himself,
he hoped that his face was not too flushed. He mounted the wide stone steps
between the fluted pillars. Glass doors whispered apart.

 
          
Registration
only took a few moments. A white-uniformed woman handled it at the front desk.
She had short black hair, except where she had trained long lacquered sweeps
down past her cheekbones to her jaw, so that she seemed to be wearing an
ancient Roman helmet.

 
          
When
she handed back Jim’s code-card, he said, “There’s one other thing. I’m the
person who’s guiding Norman Harper’s murderer.”

 
          
“You
have my sympathy.”

 
          
“Thanks.
But apart from that I thought that someone from here might have checked into
the man’s background ...”

 
          
“Ah,
you’re having difficulties?”