Death Qualified Part 53

"Why did Schumaker a.s.sume that Mike would be in sane, appear insane?"

Frank poured himself a gla.s.s of wine and came to the table to sit opposite her.

"Bobby, what are you getting at?"

"They don't know as much as they think they do," she said.

"They must have thought that Lucas was driven mad when maybe it was their own interference that made him that way. As soon as he was free, he was okay, and ac cording to his last tape, he said he knew why the boy laughed. Remember? And he laughed. Nell said he was happy, laughing when she saw him. Frobisher must have altered the program more than they realized. The last boy he tried it on apparently didn't go insane in the slightest, but it took with him. Maybe it took with Lucas in spite of what they believed about their control of him, making him forget all about it. That's why he bought food and camping stuff. He must have intended to spend time alone listening to the tapes, trying to remember what had gone on before they started treating him. He must have remembered finally, and that's why he was happy and laughing at the end."

Frank gulped down most of his wine.

"I tell you this, honey. I'm just real glad those disks are gone, burned up, the research gone, done with."

She was paying scant attention, her eyes narrowed in thought, frowning. '-"What if Schumaker has that detective keep an eye on Mike for a time, a couple of weeks, say?

Maybe not around the clock or anything like that. But to check up on him now and then. What if they begin to wonder if he's insane, or why he isn't, if that's the case?

Frobisher was the only one of that bunch who actually saw an unqualified success, apparently, and he killed the boy.

You saw Herbert Margolis, how he reacted; he knows the truth about those deaths. Dad, they can't just walk away from Mike now; they're too frightened of what they've let loose. What will they do if they suspect the process affected him the way Frobisher meant it to?"

"Christ on a mountain!" He stood up and went to the other side of the kitchen.

He had no answer, she knew, any more than she did. In a little while he said he was going to go collect Mike now because later he would be too busy finishing the meal, and maybe she could shake herself enough to set the table. He sounded very cross.

Although the dinner was excellent, the dinner party sank without a ripple, Barbara thought later at the table, with not a thing to say. Mike was like a schoolboy whose ears still rang with his mother's admonitions: Sir up straight, mind your P's and Q's, speak when spoken to, be polite and taste everything, laugh at your host's jokes.. In between obeying without hesitation all the orders, he sat silently, withdrawn, preoccupied, mired in whatever it was that had possessed him and turned him into an expression less stranger.

Finally Frank laid down his fork carefully and leaned on his elbows, regarding Mike.

"Son, either you tell us what you're going through, what's on your mind, what happened to you and how it's affecting you, or I'm going to pour the gravy on your head. Hear that?"

Mike looked puzzled at first, then belatedly he smiled.

The smile was short-lived. He folded his napkin and put it down on the table.

"I think I'd better go now," he said.

"I'm sorry, Frank, Barbara. I shouldn't have come, not yet. I can't say anything about it. I don't know what to say. I don't know what's happening, or even how to talk about it. It's like hearing music for the first time and trying to describe it to the deaf. Do you talk about it in mathematical terms, in emotional terms, as a force, resonances, sound waves, as a reminder of yesterday, all the yesterdays? See? I don't know how yet. Or even if there's any thing to talk about."

He stood up and looked at Barbara with an expression that was quickly banished and replaced by one of friendliness "I'll give you a call," he said, and left them at the table. In a moment they heard the door open and close.

Neither moved.

That look, she thought distantly, trying to hold her awareness far away from herself, as if to cage it, contain it, not feel it at all that look had been one of pity.

THIRTY-SIX.

time pa.s.ses, barbara thought sometime during the night.

Whatever it is, it pa.s.ses. You think it won't, that it got stuck somewhere, and then you see the hour has changed after all. She felt this was a revelation worthy of great discourses, discussions, debates. She stifled a giggle, moving from her window back to the bed, which she had torn up so completely that she had to remake it before she could crawl back under the covers.

Four o'clock, she realized a bit later in wonder. She had thought it would never leave the three hour. Three o'clock, three-fifteen, three-eighteen.. ..

She tried to arrange the coming day, but. the pieces eluded her. Instead, she kept thinking of the nature of violence, and how once more she had stepped into the cage with the violent ones. In spite of all her protests, her yearning to be free of it, her determination to partic.i.p.ate no more in a system that was irreparable, she had walked inside the arena again. Now she was committed to see Nell through it. And then? Then, she knew, she wanted to destroy Ruth Brandy wine and Herbert Margolis, and most of all, Walter Schumaker. The self-knowledge filled her with despair.

Well, she told herself sourly, you tried to be saintly, and you failed. Sainthood's not for you, kiddo.

Or anyone else, she added, looking at the clock again; this time she pulled herself from the bed. Trying so hard to relax was more exhausting than being up doing something.

Sweep the kitchen, wash windows, read the alma406 nac, read the cereal box, anything was better than the kind of physical struggle it was to remain in bed.

What had Frobisher offered and then taken back? Un expectedly, the question welled up again, like Old Faithful gone erratic, she thought in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee. What would it be like to hear music in the land of the deaf? To see in the land of the blind? Evolution, Mike had said, offered, withdrawn, destroyed. Yet the feeling of change was rampant. She had seen all the new age magazines, the psychic bibles, the ads, the workshops announced Had the apes sensed change? Had they stared at their hands without thumbs in wonder? Had Neanderthal Man glimpsed Cro-Magnon across the valley, and felt fear and wonder? She shook her head sharply and poured the coffee.

Maybe humans didn't have time to wait for nature's evolution, she thought at the table, her hands cradling the hot mug. No time, no time. The Earth is threatened; we're all threatened. No time to wait. They had set themselves up as t.i.tans, but unlike Prometheus, they had not been willing to pay the price, the agony of the rock. They had found something, and then destroyed it. Something evil, deadly?

Something wonderful that they couldn't have themselves?

Or just something so different that where it would lead could not be predicted, nor what changes it would bring about? That would be the most fearsome of all; to change the world with no idea of what the changes would ultimately mean. But wasn't that exactly what the miners, the forest levelers, the dam builders, the chemical companies were already doing? Making changes on a scale inhumanly large, with unpredictable results. A b.u.t.terfly wakes up, and someone in a corporate office says do it, and the world changes.

Even as she thought this, she accepted that it was different when it was human nature itself that was being changed at the level of chromosomes. Not just a new cure for an old disease, a one-to-one cause-and-effect process, but a process that could be pa.s.sed on and on.

Where did Mike fit in? What happened to him? How was he now, this morning, this minute?

Abruptly she stood up and went to find a note pad. No matter where her thoughts started, they always came back to those same few questions that she could not answer.

"Ah, Bobby," Frank said when he entered the kitchen at eight-thirty. He rested his hand on her head for a moment; she reached up and patted it.

"Dad, it's all right. I'm all right. Get some coffee."

"You look all right, all right," he said and shuffled over to the counter.

"Well, I am. Look, someone has to get in touch with Tony today, or Larry Ernst, if necessary. We have to get them to agree not to announce a new trial for a few days at the very least. A week or two would be even better."

"Honey," he protested.

"House rule, no business before breakfast. Keerist!"

She nodded absently and glanced over the page of notes she had made.

"Okay. And I've about decided to give Clive to that Deschutes sheriff, not Tony. I'd like to discuss that, though. It could be I'm just being b.i.t.c.hy. I know I'd like to see Tony with egg on his face." Frank groaned and set about making himself scrambled eggs, muttering under his breath as he moved back and forth from refrigerator to stove.

She looked up.

"I'm sorry. What?"

"Not much," he said.

"Just that you can't give what you ain't got."

"I'll get him," she said, and looked down at her notes again.

"I'll tackle Nell. She has to put off telling Clive anything, making any decision about confessing.

I'll see if I can get her in line for now. Don't quite know how since I can't really tell her anything, but I'll do something."

Frank banged a spatula against a pan. He was scowling ferociously when she looked at him again.

"How long you been up?"

"I don't know. Hours."

"Showered yet? You haven't even got dressed yet. Why don't you go do some of those things and let a man eat breakfast?"

She did not go to town with Frank that morning. He took the car and planned to drive in to Eugene after picking up his paper. He would see Tony, or the district attorney, Lawrence Ernst.

"Make it good. Dad," she said, and kissed his cheek.

He had recovered his equanimity; it comes with food, he had said. Now he searched his pocket for car keys and said with a straight face, "I'll be good. They know I'm the one who cuts deals. One way or the other I'll buy us a little time."

She put her hands on his chest and gave him a little shove, then went back to the kitchen and her notes. The garage called to say her car was ready, could she pick it up? She said no way, and, grumbling, they agreed to send it out with a driver and a following car to bring him back.

The price they were charging her, she thought, they should be happy if they had to send out a parade.

The next time the phone rang, it was Bailey.

"Got something pretty interesting," he said, and she caught her breath. What to anyone else might be earthshaking was merely interesting to Bailey.

"I'd better come out there with it," he went on.

"Couple of hours. And, something else, you know that guy you got your eyes on? If you can round up a picture, that would come in handy. His ex has a pretty interesting job with the city, by the way.

Thought you might like to know that, too. Clerk in the DA's office. See you around noon."

She sat down trying to son it out. Eugene was a small enough city, she thought, that it wasn't really surprising to find Clive's ex-wife in the DA's office, or anywhere else.

Frank said it had been a friendly divorce; they kept in touch. Early on, she remembered, Clive had said he asked around about her and her father. She nodded. He had a contact, after all, someone who could answer his questions, keep him informed of what was going on. Today's visit by Frank? She nodded again. He probably would find out about that, too. It was quite likely that Frank would hint that with a little time he could get Nell to cut a deal, but that she, Barbara, was being difficult.

She shivered, suddenly remembering the rock smashing through her windshield. Just another dimension, she told herself, another little interesting quirk in a case that was filled with them. Briskly she stood up and began to pace.

A picture of Clive. Not here, probably not at Nell's house.

Then she remembered Jessie's snapping her picture on her deck. Possibly she did that with everyone who visited.

It was not raining, not very cold; the woods were misty and a vibrant green. Everything was saturated with green, the trees, the needles, mosses, ferns; they all seemed to glow and pulsate. Everything was dripping, or airing drops as if they had been hung out like tiny ornaments. It was very quiet; even the river was muted by the trees. The river song was such a ubiquitous melody that its absence gave an unfamiliar alien quality to the woods now.

At the edge of the woods, with Doc's house sprawling before her, she paused, then straightened her shoulders and walked forward. She tried the front door, locked, then she tried the door to the service area, locked, and finally went around the house to the gla.s.s doors of the living room. Mike stood there.

"Open up," she called.

He shook his head.

"I don't want to talk to you, or even see you. I'm after something."

He started to walk away, back into the room, and she hit the door with her fist.

"Open this door or I'll break it!"

Now he came back and released the lock and slid the door open a few inches.

"You just can't leave it alone, can you?" he said bitterly.

"Don't flatter yourself, buster. I told you I'm after something. Just go hide under a bed or something and let me get on with it."

After he pushed the door open, she stalked past him without a glance. In the center of the room she stopped, considering where Jessie might keep photographs. At a sound from Mike she glanced over her shoulder, and then spun around, staring. He was laughing. His laughter was raucous and unchecked; He clutched the door and held on, nearly doubled over with laughter.

She shrugged and turned away from him, denying the panic that seized her. Pretending an oblivion that would have been superhuman if true, she started to move toward the television room, den, whatever they called it here.

Once more a strangled sound from Mike stopped her.

She faced him, her panic, fear, faked calm all giving way to fury.

"Either I put my nose on upside down this morning, or it's a private joke that I couldn't possibly understand, or you're wacko. And at the moment, I don't give a d.a.m.n which."

He closed the door all the way and moved to a long white sofa and collapsed on it.

"You're wonderful," he said as soon as he caught his breath. His mirth was so close to the surface that he had to gulp in more air before he could go on.

"I've been wrestling with ghosts and demons and spirits and wraiths and shadows, and you come in with absolute hard-edged reality and pa.s.s right through my tormentors without a flinch, without a glance, and scatter them off into never-never land."

"Wacko," she said, and then more critically, "You look like h.e.l.l!" He looked as if he had not slept even as much as she had, and she knew that was too little by far. He had not shaved; his hair was wild with too much handling.

Probably he had not eaten.

"I have a right. What are you after?"

"First, how are you?"

"You said it: wacko. But getting better."

She nodded as if the answer satisfied her.

"A picture of Clive."