Beast Of The Heartland And Other Stories Part 18

South on I-93 to New York, Washington, Miami, and points beyond?

Brazil?

Just the place, so they said, for a man with a gun on the run. He let the rhyme sing inside his head for a minute or so, liking the erratic spin it lent to all his thoughts.

He switched on the radio. He heard the amplified crack of a bat and brash music. Then a man's voice blatted from the speaker, saying that his guest was Mike Greenwell of the Boston Red Sox. Penner had to laugh.

"What the f.u.c.k's goin' on?" asked the red-haired man; he crooked his head to the side so he could get a look at Penner.

"You gotta name?" Penner asked.

"Yeah... Tom," said the man with bad grace.

"You a Sox fan, Tom?"

The man said, "What?"

"I said you a Sox fan? It's not a trick question."

Silence.

"Know what I think about the Sox, Tom? They're G.o.d's baseball joke. A metaphor for man's futility.

The Sisyphus of the American League East."

The man's face showed no sign of comprehension. His eyes were flat and regarding. A serpent, Penner thought. There is a serpent in my garden.

"Where's McDonough?" Penner asked him.

More silence.

"Now you don't have to answer." Penner jabbed the muzzle of the gun into the man's belly. "But I just bet he's waiting for a call from you."

"Home," said the man. "He's at home."

"Anyone with him? A woman, maybe?"

"How the f.u.c.k should I know?"

"Right," said Penner, pulling back the gun. "How, indeed?"

But Penner knew his Barbara. She would be with McDonough. She was part of this. And she would be able to live with it, to make that kind of moral trade-off. He experienced a hiccup of emotion and pictured pale limbs asprawl, a gory tunnel burrowed into a shock of white hair. Could he really waste them? he wondered. How would it feel? Amazingly enough, it had felt pretty d.a.m.n good so far. Since blood from the ears was not considered a healthy sign, he figured his score for the day was two. Four would not be a problem.

But, after all, it would be nice to survive this. As Barbara herself was wont to say, the best revenge was living well.

He had not, he realized, been considering the prospect of survival until this moment. Not really. Not with the calculation you needed to weigh the possibilities, nor with the calmness necessary to believe in them.

On the radio Mike Greenwell was saying there was no reason to panic, they just had to take 'em one at a time.

Sound philosophy, Mike. Words to live by.

A pickup truck roared past, somebody screamed a curse at Penner. He noticed that he had let the speed of the car drop to thirty.

Brazil.

Take the money and run. What could be the problem with that?

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Ol' Tom shifting about ever so slightly, preparing to try and kick the gun. Penner couldn't much blame him for trying -- unless he were a c.o.c.keyed optimist, he could not like his chances very much. He had proved a surly b.a.s.t.a.r.d, had Tom, and Penner elected not to extend him a warning.

The problem, he decided, making an effort to concentrate, the problem was in himself. In the Penner he always ended up being, no matter how promising the circ.u.mstance. Sad, sorrowful Penner. Christ the Penner inevitably borne toward some unimportant Pa.s.sion.

But that, he thought, was the old Penner, the b.u.mbling, good-hearted villain, the con man with aconscience.

Who was he now? he wondered. Was this Penner any better off?

Hot, he thought. Excessive heating of the face and palms seemed the primary characteristic of this particular Penner. A few aches and pains, a desire for an end to all this. Otherwise, very little to report.

Pared down to almost nothing.

"You can't do better than your best," Mike Greenwell was saying. "You give a hundred and fifty percent, you got no reason to hang your head."

Amen to that, Mike.

The red-haired man had worked a leg up onto the seat, and Penner thought a confrontation might be just the way to decide such a momentous issue as one's future or the lack thereof. Let him make his play.

If Penner won, he would do... something. He'd figure out exactly what later.

Despite the indecisiveness of this resolution, Penner felt there was a fine weight to it, an Irish logic that defied interpretation. To make things interesting, he boosted their speed to fifty. Then to sixty. He kept pressing his foot harder on the gas, watching the needle climb, feeling that the speed was the result of him being pulled toward something. There was a curve coming up about a mile ahead, and he wondered how it would be just to keep going straight when he reached it. To go arcing up into stormlight over the water, into the golden glare and big-muscled clouds. And then down.

Do I hear any objections? he asked himself.

f.u.c.king A, I object, he anwered. f.u.c.k all that remorseful Catholic bulls.h.i.t! This is your G.o.dd.a.m.n life, Penner. This is the Hundred-Thousand-Dollar Challenge! Are you man enough to accept it?

"You play a hunnerd and sixty-two games," Mike Greenwell said, "you gotta expect a few bad days.

But we'll be there in the end."

Dead on, Mike me boyo!

Penner could tell that the red-haired man was waiting for him to look away, to do something that would give him an advantage; but that was no longer a problem. The game was in hand, and all the signs were auspicious. Light was flowing around the car, fountaining up behind in an incandescent wake, and the green world was blurring with their momentum, and the corners of Penner's mind were sharp and bright as never before. Life hot as a magnesium flare, as Brazil, as freedom and the future, all the love in him sizzling high. He boosted their speed to 65 as they approached the curve, enjoying the feeling of being on the edge.

"Hey!" said the red-haired man; he had curled his fingers about the door handle, his eyes were round with fright. "Hey, you're going too fast!"

The old Penner might have lied, made a gentle promise, offered hope, or perhaps spoken persuasively of the afterlife. But this was not the old Penner.

Far from it.

"Not me," said the Wild Blue-Eyed Penner, lifting his gun. As the Caddy swung into the sweet gravity of the curve, he trained the gun at his enemy's heart, seeing only an interruption of the light, a dark keyhole set in a golden door. The thunderous report and the kick made it seem that the man's life had traveled up his arm, charging him with a fierce new spirit. He took in the sight without flinching. Blood as red as paper roses. The body with its slack, twisted limbs looked larger than before, more solid, as if death were in essence a kind of important stillness. He stared at it until he was completely at ease. A smile sliced his face, the sort of intent expression that comes from peering into strong sunlight or hard weather. He thought about the disposal problem, a pa.s.sport, opportunities for tropical investment. He spun the tuning dial, found an easy listening station. Paul Simon was going to Graceland, and he was going with him.

"Not me," said Penner the Implacable, the Conscienceless, the Almost Nothing Man. "I'm just hitting my stride."

THE SUN SPIDER.

First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, April 1987.

...In Africa's Namib Desert, one of the most hostile environments on the face of the earth, lives a creature known as the sun spider. Its body is furred pale gold, the exact color of the sand beneath which it burrows in search of its prey, disturbing scarcely a grain in its pa.s.sage. It emerges from hiding only to s.n.a.t.c.h its prey, and were you to look directly at it from an inch away, you might never notice its presence. Nature is an efficient process, tending to repeat elegant solutions to the problem of survival in such terrible places. Thus, if -- as I posit -- particulate life exists upon the Sun, I would not be startled to learn it has adopted a similar form.

--Reynolds Dulambre, Alchemical Diaries.

1.

Carolyn.

My husband Reynolds and I arrived on Helios Station following four years in the Namib, where he had delivered himself of the Diaries, including the controversial Solar Equations, and where I had become adept in the uses of boredom. We were met at the docking arm by the administrator of the Physics Section, Dr. Davis Brent, who escorted us to a reception given in Reynolds' honor, held in one of the pleasure domes that blistered the skin of the station. Even had I been unaware that Brent was one of Reynolds' chief detractors, I would have known the two of them for adversaries: In manner and physicality, they were total opposites, like cobra and mongoose. Brent was pudgy, of medium stature, with a receding hairline, and dressed in a drab standard-issue jumpsuit. Reynolds -- at thirty-seven, only two years younger -- might have been ten years his junior. He was tall and lean, with chestnut hair that fell to the shoulders of his cape, and possessed of that craggy n.o.bility of feature one a.s.sociates with a Shakespearian lead. Both were on their best behavior, but they could barely manage civility, and so it was quite a relief when we reached the dome and were swept away into a crowd of admiring techs and scientists.

Helios Station orbited the south pole of the Sun, and through the ports I had a view of a docking arm to which several of the boxy ships that journeyed into the coronosphere were moored. Leaving Reynolds to be lionized, I lounged beside one of the ports and gazed toward Earth, pretending I was celebrating Nation Day in Abidjan rather than enduring this gathering of particle-pushers and inductive reasoners, most of whom were gawking at Reynolds, perhaps hoping he would live up to his reputation and perform a drugged collapse or start a fight. I watched him and Brent talking. Brent's body language was toadying, subservient, like that of a dog trying to curry favor; he would clasp his hands and tip his head to the side when making some point, as if begging his master not to strike him. Reynolds stood motionless, arms folded across his chest.

At one point Brent said, "I can't see what purpose you hope to achieve in beaming protons into coronal holes," and Reynolds, in his most supercilious tone, responded by saying that he was merely poking about in the weeds with a long stick.

I was unable to hear the next exchange, but then I did hear Brent say, "That may be, but I don't think you understand the openness of our community. The barriers you've erected around your research go against the spirit, the..."

"All my G.o.dd.a.m.ned life," Reynolds cut in, broadcasting in a stagy baritone, "I've been hara.s.sed by little men. Men who've carved out some cozy academic niche by footnoting my work and then decrying it. Mousy little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds like you. And that's why I maintain my privacy... to keep the mice from nesting inmy papers."

He strode off toward the refreshment table, leaving Brent smiling at everyone, trying to show that he had not been affected by the insult. A slim brunette attached herself to Reynolds, engaging him in conversation. He ill.u.s.trated his points with florid gestures, leaning over her, looking as if he were about to enfold her in his cape, and not long afterward they made a discreet exit.

Compared to Reynolds' usual public behavior, this was a fairly restrained display, but sufficient to make the gathering forget my presence. I sipped a drink, listening to the chatter, feeling no sense of betrayal. I was used to Reynolds' infidelities, and, indeed, I had come to thrive on them. I was grateful he had found his brunette. Though our marriage was not devoid of the sensual, most of our encounters were ritual in nature, and after four years of isolation in the desert, I needed the emotional sustenance of a lover. Helios would, I believed, provide an ample supply.

Shortly after Reynolds had gone, Brent came over to the port, and to my amazement, he attempted to pick me up. It was one of the most inept seductions to which I have ever been subject. He contrived to touch me time and again as if by accident, and complimented me several times on the largeness of my eyes. I managed to turn the conversation into harmless channels, and he got off into politics, a topic on which he considered himself expert.

"My essential political philosophy," he said, "derives from a story by one of the masters of twentieth-century speculative fiction. In the story, a man sends his mind into the future and finds himself in a utopian setting, a greensward surrounded by white buildings, with handsome men and beautiful women strolling everywhere..."

I cannot recall how long I listened to him, to what soon became apparent as a ludicrous Libertarian fantasy, before bursting into laughter. Brent looked confused by my reaction, but then masked confusion by joining in my laughter. "Ah, Carolyn," he said. "I had you going there, didn't I? You thought I was serious!"

I took pity on him. He was only a sad little man with an inflated self-opinion; and, too, I had been told that he was in danger of losing his administrative post. I spent the best part of an hour in making him feel important; then, sc.r.a.ping him off, I went in search of a more suitable companion.

My first lover on Helios Station, a young particle physicist named Thom, proved overweening in his affections. The sound of my name seemed to transport him; often he would lift his head and say, "Carolyn, Carolyn," as if by doing this he might capture my essence. I found him absurd, but I was starved for attention, and though I could not reciprocate in kind, I was delighted in being the object of his single-mindedness. We would meet each day in one of the pleasure domes, dance to drift, and drink paradisiacs -- I developed quite a fondness for Amouristes -- and then retire to a private chamber, there to make love and watch the sunships return from their fiery journeys. It was Thom's dream to be a.s.signed someday to a sunship, and he would rhapsodize on the glories attendant upon swooping down through layers of burning gases. His fixation with the scientific adventure eventually caused me to break off the affair. Years of exposure to Reynolds' work had armored me against any good opinion of science, and further I did not want to be reminded of my proximity to the Sun: Sometimes I imagined I could hear it hissing, roaring, and feel its flames tonguing the metal walls, preparing to do us to a crisp with a single lick.

By detailing my infidelity, I am not trying to characterize my marriage as loveless. I loved Reynolds, though my affections had waned somewhat. And he loved me in his own way. Prior to our wedding, he had announced that he intended our union to be "a marriage of souls." But this was no pa.s.sionate outcry, rather a statement of scientific intent. He believed in souls, believed they were the absolute expression ofa life, a quality that pervaded every particle of matter and gave rise to the lesser expressions of personality and physicality. His search for particulate life upon the Sun was essentially an attempt to isolate and communicate with the anima, and the "marriage of souls" was for him the logical goal of twenty-first-century physics. It occurs to me now that this search may have been his sole means of voicing his deepest emotions, and it was our core problem that I thought he would someday love me in a way that would satisfy me, whereas he felt my satisfaction could be guaranteed by the application of scientific method.

To further define our relationship, I should mention that he once wrote me that the "impa.s.sive, vaguely oriental beauty" of my face reminded him of "those serene countenances used to depict the solar disc on ancient sailing charts." Again, this was not the imagery of pa.s.sion: He considered this likeness a talisman, a lucky charm. He was a magical thinker, perceiving himself as more akin to the alchemists than to his peers, and like the alchemists, he gave credence to the power of similarities. Whenever he made love to me, he was therefore making love to the Sun. To the great detriment of our marriage, every beautiful woman became for him the Sun, and thus a potential tool for use in his rituals. Given his enormous ego, it would have been out of character for him to have been faithful, and had he not utilized s.e.x as a concentrative ritual, I am certain he would have invented another excuse for infidelity. And, I suppose, I would have had to contrive some other justification for my own.

During those first months I was indiscriminate in my choice of lovers, entering into affairs with both techs and a number of Reynolds' colleagues. Reynolds himself was no more discriminating, and our lives took separate paths. Rarely did I spend a night in our apartment, and I paid no attention whatsoever to Reynolds' work. But then one afternoon as I lay with my latest lover in the private chamber of a pleasure dome, the door slid open and in walked Reynolds. My lover -- a tech whose name eludes me -- leaped up and began struggling into his clothes, apologizing all the while. I shouted at Reynolds, railed at him.

What right did he have to humiliate me this way? I had never burst in on him and his wh.o.r.es, had I?

Imperturbable, he stared at me, and after the tech had scurried out, he continued to stare, letting me exhaust my anger. At last, breathless, I sat glaring at him, still angry, yet also feeling a measure of guilt...

not relating to my affair, but to the fact that I had become pregnant as a result of my last encounter with Reynolds. We had tried for years to have a child, and despite knowing how important a child would be to him, I had put off the announcement. I was no longer confident of his capacity for fatherhood.

"I'm sorry about this." He waved at the bed. "It was urgent I see you, and I didn't think."

The apology was uncharacteristic, and my surprise at it drained away the dregs of anger. "What is it?"

I asked.

Contrary emotions played over his face. "I've got him," he said.

I knew what he was referring to: He always personified the object of his search, although before too long he began calling it "the Spider." I was happy for his success, but for some reason it had made me a little afraid, and I was at a loss for words.

"Do you want to see him?" He sat beside me. "He's imaged in one of the tanks."

I nodded.

I was sure he was going to embrace me. I could see in his face the desire to break down the barriers we had erected, and I imagined now his work was done, we would be as close as we had once hoped, that honesty and love would finally have their day. But the moment pa.s.sed, and his face hardened. He stood and paced the length of the chamber. Then he whirled around, hammered a fist into his palm, and with all the pa.s.sion he had been unable to direct toward me, he said, "I've got him!"

I had been watching him for over a week without knowing it: a large low-temperature areashifting about in a coronal hole. It was only by chance that I recognized him; I inadvertently nudged the color controls of a holo tank, and brought part of the low-temperature area into focus, revealing a many-armed ovoid of constantly changing primary hues, the arms attenuating and vanishing: I have observed some of these arms reach ten thousand miles in length, and I have no idea what limits apply to their size. He consists essentially of an inner complex of ultracold neutrons enclosed by an intense magnetic field. Lately it has occurred to me that certain of the coronal holes may be no more than the att.i.tude of his movements. Aside from these few facts and guesses, he remains a mystery, and I have begun to suspect that no matter how many elements of his nature are disclosed, he will always remain so.

--Reynolds Dulambre, Collected Notes.

2.

Reynolds.

Brent's face faded in on the screen, his features composed into one of those fawning smiles. "Ah, Reynolds," he said. "Glad I caught you."