Death Qualified Part 38

"With raspberry jam. Deal?"

Carol nodded, then yawned a legitimate yawn.

"Deal," she said. She wriggled her way back under the covers; one hand reached out to pull a stuffed Pooh bear close, and she yawned again. Nell went to the door.

"Good night, honey," she said softly. She left the door open about an inch, the way she always did, and moved away from it, but then she leaned against the wall with her eyes closed hard. The fear surged and ebbed and surged again.

After a few moments she went down the stairs, only to pause again, this time at the bottom, listening to Travis explain a complicated game to Clive.

"You get to ask two questions, and everyone in the game gets to see them and the answers, so you've got to be careful what you ask."

The alien game, she realized. An alien was loose some 7 where in the United States and the players were trying to find him/her/it. One of the players was concealing it. She smiled faintly. Travis could hardly wait until he was The Keeper, the one who tried to hide the alien. She entered the living room where Clive was standing at Travis's side at the computer.

"One down," she said cheerfully.

"Any of that pie left?"

Clive had brought apple pie, made by Lonnie that after noon. He grinned and went to the kitchen with her.

"He's playing with kids from Atlanta, Chicago, who knows where else? I had no idea stuff like that was going on."

"I know. I was thinking that I should take them on a car trip, a long trip, just so they get an idea of the size of the real world. I don't think he suspects how far away Atlanta actually is, or New York." She cut a piece of pie; she had not wanted any after dinner, but, now, an hour or two later, dessert was welcome. They sat at the kitchen table where she could see Travis at the computer, intent on the game. So like Lucas, she thought. So very like his father.

"Doesn't it get pricey? Long-distance calls and all?"

"Not as bad as you'd think. He's on a budget, ten dollars a month, and after that, if he goes over, it comes out of his allowance." She looked at her son again, and the thought came, as clear as it was irrational, that he was using the computer to build a wall, that he was filling every waking moment with school, homework, and now computer games in order to erect a three-sided haven that was too constricted to admit her. After the first bite of pie, she realized that she didn't want it after all. Travis made one of those curious, incomplete gestures and snorted with laughter; he attacked the keyboard again.

"You didn't eat any dinner, and now you're just playing with the pie," Clive said in a low voice.

"Lonnie said to tell you she picked those apples herself, and they've never been sprayed."

Nell took another bite. "And she's picked out a new victim," Clive said. "Schumaker, and maybe Brandywine, too. But Schumaker for certain." "Good!" Nell said. "If she needs any help, you know, with rat poison or something, tell her...." She looked down at her plate when the realization hit her that she could not say something like that, maybe never again. "I told her I'd be her accomplice, but she said it was to be a one-woman job or it won't count. I asked her if she planned to go to Denver, and she said she can wait for him to show up."

"He'll be sorry if he does," she murmured.

"Barbara will slap him with a subpoena, too, I'll bet."

"Nell, will you marry me? Please," he said suddenly.

His voice was husky, and he looked surprised at the words tumbling out like this.

"Shhh," she said.

"Not now. Don't ask now. After this is all over, behind us, then ask. I can't think of anything now."

"But now is when you need someone. We can get married right away, and I'll file adoption papers.

Now. Next week, as soon as possible."

She felt as if her little house had been set adrift on a storm-roughed sea all at once. The floor was rising and falling, the table was shifting, losing its solidity; even the air seemed to darken and thicken.

"Oh, G.o.d! Here, put your head down. This way." He forced her head down, and soon blood began to circulate again. She pushed his hands away after a moment and got to her feet, his hand on her arm, steadying her.

"How dumb can you get?" she muttered.

"Me, I mean.

Not you. I want a drink of water. I'm okay now." But she felt moonbeam-light, as if she might drift up from the floor with every step.

They went to the sink, where she grasped the edge of the counter while he ran water and filled a gla.s.s.

"G.o.d, Nell, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to do that to you!

I'm sorry."

"I know," she said, and drank the water.

"It's all right.

I'm just tired. Not quite enough sleep, probably. I'm fine now."

He looked agonized, and then he took her into his arms and held her almost too hard, nearly smothering her against his chest. She realized how much she wanted to be held and kept safe. She wanted desperately to be held and kept safe.

In the living room, Travis whooped gleefully, and Nell pulled away from dive's arms.

"Thanks," she said.

"I.

needed that. You'd better go now. It's just about bedtime for Travis, and I'm going to bed the minute he packs it in.

I'm really tired."

Clive touched her cheek gently, leaned forward, and kissed her lightly on the lips.

"I'll come by tomorrow.

Get some sleep."

After he was gone, she thought of the words "get some sleep" and didn't know which might come first, laughter or tears. She yearned for a night of sleep, of getting into bed as she used to, rolling over once, and slipping into oblivion the way a child does. Now, these nights, she slept, dreamed, and jerked wide awake, slept, dreamed, jerked awake, over and over and over, and in the morning when the alarm went off she felt leaden and groggy. Cry, she decided; that would be more appropriate than laughing.

Crazy people laughed at the wrong times, she told herself; in her mind's eye there was Lucas on the ledge, laughing, happy.

"Watch this!" Laughing.

Her mind reeled away from the image, the way it always did, even in her dreams, and she went to see if Travis was ready to call it quits for the evening. Sometimes, if he was in the middle of his own move, she stood by waiting, watching, understanding nothing of what he was doing.

Tonight he was already out of the alien game.

"He's in Wichita," he said.

"I know he is, but I've got to think of the right questions to ask so no one else will guess, too.

Got to be exactly the right questions."

"Well, sleep on it. Probably in the morning they'll come to you."

A light blinked on the computer; he grunted in satisfaction.

"This guy has the Mandelbrot program. I gave it to him a long time ago, and he's getting some pretty good pictures. We're trading. I'll show you tomorrow, if you want."

"I want," she said. But what she wanted was for him to face her, to look at her directly, to smile his funny-little-boy, wise-old-man smile, to gauge her mood before launching into a fantastic scheme.

He turned off the computer, stretched and yawned, spied a book on an end table and went over to pick it up, and then bounded upstairs, calling good night. He did not look' directly at her.

Sat.u.r.day the fog lifted for the first time all week. The sun came out weakly, a drizzle fell, the sun returned, and altogether it was a pleasant late-fall day in Oregon. Barbara stood at the head of the waterfall gazing at the spray far below. She had not intended to come this far, but neither could she sit still and work through the words, the sentences, the paragraphs of her summation. She hoped that it would organize itself in her head while her feet moved. Now she looked at the waterfall, the gushing little Halleck Creek, the trail that twisted down to the ledge.

Slowly she crossed the log to Nell's side and started downward again.

The forest was dense on this side, more so than on the other, and the trail was easier: more often used, kept in better shape. She spied a cl.u.s.ter of mushrooms and leaned against a tree trunk for a few seconds. Nell and Lucas used to gather mushrooms, she remembered. A bushel basket of chanterelles, Nell had said, and morels, puffb.a.l.l.s. . She pushed away from the tree and squinted her eyes when a mini-shower doused her head.

She became more glum as she continued down the trail. The image of Lucas was persistent: hungry, dehydrated, his feet so swollen he could not have put his boots on again if he had taken them off. Blisters, infection, agony with every step.

The trail wound around a mammoth fir tree and unexpectedly dropped five feet; she slipped in mud, fell to a sitting position, and slid another foot or two before she stopped. She just sat there for a minute, then finally heaved herself up again; now she looked back the way she had come. But it was shorter to keep going, she knew, and doggedly she went on, watching her footing more care fully. Now the trail was carpeted again with a deep mat of needles, and occasional rocks; the little mud slide had been a fluke.

She skirted the cliff that was the back boundary of the ledge; here, she knew, the trail was like stair steps down, never in a straight line, but easy enough because it was so rocky. She stepped over a rivulet that had not been there back in the early fall when she had explored this whole trail, this approach to the ledge. She thought of the great heart of the Earth pumping its life-giving water in tiny rivulets that appeared only during the rainy sea son, and then joined the bigger creeks, like Halleck Creek, which rushed to the McKenzie River, which in turn joined the Willamette, and then the Columbia and at last made the tremendous flood that fed the great ocean. Fractals, she thought with a start of recognition.

She was seeing them everywhere.

The trail had brought her to the side of the ledge; now when she paused she could step among the few trees that still hid the ledge from view, trees that would have hidden someone standing here, she added. She left the trail to make her way between the trees, only half a dozen or so steps, and finally she could see the entire ledge, the chasm that split the two parts, the edge where Lucas had stood laughing until the bullet struck him.

"Hasn't changed a d.a.m.n bit," she muttered at last. The other time she had come up here, she had stepped off the trail at about this point, jumped down to the ledge, and finally had gone down the other part of the trail that Nell had used to climb up to the ledge. In irritation, she turned her back on the ledge this time and followed the main trail downward until it branched, with the lesser one angling sharply upward.

Ever-branching highways, roads, trails, paths, deer paths. Fractals again, she thought, like the ever-branching trees, or the ever-branching human arterial system. She had stopped at the fork, scowling at the path that climbed steeply, Nell's path. Abruptly she started to follow it, for no reason she could name, only to finish what was an exercise in futility, she told herself. Keep the body working keep the blood flowing, maybe something will occur that will save the day, save little Nell, save the universe.

She was breathing hard already; this section was steeper than the one she had left, and it was uphill. It also was muddy and treacherous; her foot slipped and she fell to her knees, clutching a tree trunk to keep from sliding again. Then, all at once, she saw the face of the cliff directly ahead; she took the next step upward, and another, and then stopped completely.

She could not see the right side of the ledge at all, she realized, only the cliff in front of her, and a log and several rounded rocks. To her right, obscuring the view, were straggly bushes and treetops. She climbed the last foot or two very slowly, keeping a close watch on exactly when the edge of the clearing came into sight. At the top, she realized that she could see it sooner than Nell, because of the difference in their height. Nell would not have seen it even when she had reached the top, not until she had taken a few steps forward onto the ledge. Barbara stood without motion, remembering what Nell had told her. She had seen him, had closed her eyes for a second, then had taken the last step up in time to hear the shot, see him fall over the side. But she couldn't have seen him until she was already on top, several steps in. Slowly Barbara made her way to the tree trunk and sat down. The sun had come out again, and it was quite warm here in this protected place with its fine southern exposure. She unzipped her jacket, tugged off her hat, and did not move again for a long time.

It was easy to believe she was the only living human being, up here with the trees and the sky and this sheltered clear spot. Not a sound penetrated, no wind stirred the needles of the endless forests, no animals scurried, no birds flew. The world had stopped.

"Time to get off," she said under her breath.

She gazed at the far side of the ledge where Lucas Kendricks had got off the world, where he had been shot to death. Now she imagined Nell climbing up the trail, not the hard, steep part, but the wider trail that was much easier. She would have chosen the easier access since she was carrying a rifle, Barbara thought distantly. She looked at the trees beyond the ledge and imagined Nell leaving the trail up there, coming out from behind a tree to see Lucas, laughing at her. In the silent theater of her mind Barbara watched Nell raise the rifle and fire it one time, watched Lucas spin back, dead. And the angle of the bullet is no longer a mystery, Barbara finished silently.

Suddenly the sun vanished behind a ma.s.s of clouds that looked like snowdrifts, and the drizzle began to settle again. It was a very cold drizzle, not actually falling, but there, appearing all around her. She zipped her jacket, replaced her hat, and started down the trail.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Barbara, what happened?" Frank demanded that afternoon, standing at the door to the terrace where she was bundled up, leaning against the railing, staring at the river.

"Why is it so black?" she asked. "It's fixing to snow."

"The river is trying to run away," she said with a nod.

"And run away and run away forever." She left the railing and crossed the deck to go inside.

"I can believe it's going to snow. It's turned frigid."

"Barbara, what's wrong? That's what I want to know."

He moved so she could enter the house, then closed the door firmly.

"I thought you had an unerring knack for recognizing when to push and when to pull, when to talk and when to be silent, when to ask questions and when to find your own answers." She intended to speak the words lightly, but they sounded bitter in spite of her efforts. She took off her down jacket and wool hat and ran her hand through her matted hair to fluff it again. She draped the jacket over a chair and continued on to the living room, where she stood close to the fire, rubbing her hands.

"You thought right," her father said, following her.

"And now's the time to find out what the h.e.l.l's going on."

"I went to the ledge today," she said.

"Interesting place."

"And?" But he had become wary; he sat in his chair watching her closely over his gla.s.ses.

"She lied, that's all." She glanced at him, then looked at the fire again.

"You've known from the start, haven't' you? That's why you said you couldn't get her off."

"I went to the ledge very early," he said after a pause.

"And I thought you had gone there early on, too."

"Oh, I did. But I didn't go by her path, Nell's path, and today I did. That makes a difference, doesn't it?"

"Barbara, sit down," Frank said then in a brusque voice.

"I can't talk to your back."

She shrugged and sank into one of the fine leather chairs opposite him.

"When that girl first came to me I didn't think there was a chance in h.e.l.l of getting her off, not a single chance.

And you've given her a chance. Lundgren might pull the carpet out from under you on Monday, but there's still that chance that didn't even exist before. I don't know what happened up on that ledge, and neither do you, and I doubt that Nell does. But I think that crowd from Denver, Brandywine and Margolis and Schumaker, they killed Lucas Kendricks as surely as if they pulled the trigger, and they replaced him with a zombie. Lucas Kendricks has been dead for more than seven years! And Nell deserves that fighting chance you've given her. She doesn't deserve getting thrown to the wolves."

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Barbara said sharply.

"I'm not going to bow out at this late date. Give me a little credit!" "There are a lot of ways of abandoning a client," her father said slowly.