The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men Part 2

"Nope. And no artificial lighting inside the compound. When it's dark outside, it's dark in the compound."

"Then what are those flashes of light?"

"Beats me. Maybe heat lightning."

"And what about that?"

"Right there? Looks like an edge of the steel framing that holds up the roof, you know, one of the sections of the dome."

"No way to enlarge any of this?"

"You could, but the resolution would be worse. What are you looking for?"

"I don't know."

He started the sequence again. And again it was night. There was the lightninglike burst of whiteness and then a sweeping shot of the rock ledge. In the upper third of the frame, through the clear dome of their world, wheeled the slow stars of the Milky Way. And in the foreground were the rocks that we call the escarpment. Creeping into the lower left were the uppermost branches of ma.s.sasa and mahogany. At 0224.14 Stillman's muppet backed into the scene as before and mustered enough desperation to charge on all fours. Then stayed out of view for nineteen seconds. Then the second lightning flash revealed Morgan, shaking his head and flailing a branch that he had broken at some lower elevation and dragged with him to the peak. And then there was something else that caught Stillman's attention as the terrified chimp slapped, open handed, at her own eyes. Just before she turned and launched herself into the void.

"Right there," he said. "What's that?"

"I don't see anything."

"Looks like a shoe."

"Might be a shadow."

"It might be a shoe."

"I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just ..."

"I think it's time to get that magnification now."

"Maybe it's time to talk. Let's step out in the hall for a second." Which is when I told him the truth. He would have figured it out in another hour. Besides, the truth wasn't relevant. It hardly ever is.

"You know why I picked you?"

"I just a.s.sumed it was a combination of the swimsuit and talent compet.i.tions."

"I picked you because I thought you might understand if it ever got this far."

"Meaning what exactly?"

"Meaning that we can do things, right now, that we couldn't do even a year ago. Meaning that these people, Stillman, are on the verge of curing half a dozen diseases, perfecting noninvasive surgery, regenerating nerves, you name it."

"And you thought what, that you could put my name on the list if they ever whipped up a cure for deafness?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"ALS is a funny disease. You can never predict which neurons in the brain and spinal cord it'll attack. Sometimes it paralyzes the arms and legs. Sometimes it affects speech or breathing first. They say Lou Gehrig himself eventually choked to death. There's no cure, no therapy, and nothing on the immediate horizon except for the slight possibility that the man you met this morning really is a genius. And that I can get Janie into the first human trials. Right now she's having trouble swallowing, and I figure in a few months it won't make any difference whether the human trials are approved or not. That's what I was hoping you could understand."

For a long time Stillman said nothing. He wiped at his face with both hands as if trying to wash away the fatigue, then sat on one of the low benches that lined the hall.

So I pressed him some more. "The procedure works. We already know that. The problem was that Greta showed some anomalies, not enough to wreck the experiment, but enough to throw off the data. So we had to start reverification. Fast. All we're asking you to do is sign a piece of paper, so we can start over with a clean slate."

"How did you do it?" he said.

"Strobe light. You know, from the break-in at the photo lab. We figured if worse came to worst, we could blame it on some protesters."

"'We' meaning you and Dr. Deckard."

"It was his idea actually. After the procedure she'd had, it would overload her brain. She'd do anything to get away from it."

"So you made a deal. Deckard gets something he wants. You get something you want. The only person hurt is a monkey. Let me ask you something, chief. Do you trust the guy that much?"

"Do I have a choice?"

Maybe I should have told him that it was all an insurance scam. It would have been easier. That's what he believed at first, and maybe he would have gone for the money. You can never tell. Even if you're spinning the absolute truth, you can never tell what kind of lies people will believe. Especially old cops. Now he would have to decide. And I'm not sure I could have chosen correctly myself. At five o'clock it was still raining the way it had been earlier, and I drove him back to his office after telling him I would e-mail a copy of his report tomorrow morning. And that Peggy could print it on their letterhead and fax it back to me in the afternoon, after he'd signed it. If that's what he felt he could do.

On the way downtown he asked me when I thought they could start human trials.

I said a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, if we stayed on the fast track.

He looked at me like he thought I'd believe anything.

The rest of the drive was silent. I let him out in the scabby parking lot of his office, and he went inside after a slight wave of the hand. I watched him flick on the overhead lights and head down the hall toward one of the cubicles.

Then I pulled back into the deserted street and followed the yellow line.

Back at the Center I headed toward my own office to begin work on the incident report. I needed to finish it and also a press release about a new cholesterol drug being developed jointly by us and a major pharmaceutical company. It would take a couple of hours, but both items needed to go out the next day. First, though, I called home and got Janie on the speakerphone. Told her that I'd be late and that I'd get Mrs. Carrillo to come over and stay the night. She wasn't happy, but she understood the job, and its benefits, better than I did. So I hung up and went by the cafeteria for coffee and a sandwich, the way I used to do when I was a reporter. Banging away on a story that would be old news by morning.

Then I took the elevator up, balancing coffee in one hand and briefcase and sandwich in the other. Sipping gingerly. Hoping Stillman would come around after he dismounted from his high horse. Taking the gla.s.sed-in hallway, the syringe, that connected the two wings of the medical section. Halfway across, almost precisely where I had stopped Stillman earlier in the day, I met a lab a.s.sistant pushing a gurney like the ones in hospitals. I had to step aside and to control the momentary horror of stepping into an abyss.

Strapped to the gurney was my friend Morgan, partially sedated and on his way to the Emerald City where Deckard and the others waited for him. He seemed neither frightened nor enraged by his restraints but merely puzzled. His face looked like a sleepy child's. And he wore a disposable diaper, already urine soaked and limp around his waist. His eyes seemed drawn to the car headlights in the parking lot far below, but as we pa.s.sed he looked in my direction and seemed to find something that he recognized. He made a slight movement with one of his hands, perhaps an attempt to communicate in sign language, who could know? Maybe it was only a reflex.

The next morning I asked Sylvia the caregiver to bring me one of those little charts they use to teach sign language to the chimps, and on it I looked in vain for the word he had left in the air. For days I wondered if he had been reaching for some unprinted thing, or only a circus word. Like grape or juice or cup.

THEY HAVE REPLACEABLE VALVES AND FILTERS.

The Cave.

FOR SUSAN.

In my mind I see the six of them hunched in the shade like a chain gang, exhausted, their fingers cut and caked with mud, faces already gone blank with despair. I imagine Burke down on his haunches, wrists hung over his knees, with a cigarette maybe, studying that ragged hole like it was his own grave. Their daddy, name of Lucas Bender, standing off by himself. And one of the twins praying, or maybe just hoping out loud, I don't know. You can imagine that second day at the cave any way you want. It don't change a thing.

I expect one of them finally said, "We could try and get that wild girl lives over to Flint Ridge. She might could crawl under the outcrop, reach him some food and a blanket so he don't freeze. I mean, if we could find her."

Which they did.

Plucked me out of a chinaberry tree. Carried me over the tourist road in a Model T Ford, my first ever ride in an automobile, to a no-name holler where the world had caved in on Lee Bender, and there I was. A whole new place. The same mountain blue sky as my sky, yes. And the same cotton white clouds, same layer on layer of greenness all tumbling over the crest of the mountain and down to towns where girls my age didn't wear overalls or bob their hair or ride off with strangers. But hill folk are different; and here I was not even surprised at a man who looked like Moses stepping me down from the running board of that Model T, saying, "Lucas Bender. This'd be Burke, Asa, Ronnie, and Donnie that brung you, and Hugh. I knew your granddaddy. And we obliged to you." Like he had all the time in the world.

That's what I remember of my life before the cave.

My childhood came and went. Like a long courtship, with wildflowers, honeycakes for breakfast, running, running, running along ledges only one step away from clouds, like you could just throw yourself out and they would catch you in the quilting of it. That's what I recall. Then the little heart shapes of sun and shadow flickering over his face. So handsome. And Burke a gentle, lumbering man who's standing in the creek to his knees, offering to carry me over like a town girl; but I jump, scramble up the bank without slipping once, and find the opening on my own right next to a mountain laurel. Because I've been in woods and caves all my life.

When I grab the branch, pink petals come twirling like snowflakes, and he's quietly behind me saying, "That air blowing in your face, it found its way from underground." He knows that he must stay calm and quiet because I might startle like a colt and then their trip would have been in vain. So Burke's voice is sleepy and slow, light enough that it nearly floats away. "What they call a breathing cave. My brother's trapped down there, but it ain't like you imagine. It won't be like climbing down into no grave, Rachel Ann, and I won't let nothing smother you. It'll breathe out like this for fifteen, twenty minutes, then, after a spell, breathe in. You can feel it the whole time. I seen it suck in a dragonfly this morning and then let it back out not even wrinkling the wings."

"It's cold," I say.

"It's fresh and clean too, like running water."

"It's cold as the grave, and there's a man down there, ain't that right?"

"It's constant fifty-one degrees," he says. "Lee told me hisself. Same temperature year-round. Fifty-one in July. Fifty-one in January."

"Either way you could die."

"It ain't like you imagine," he insists. "Nothing ever is."

And talks me in by degrees. He carries the blanket and the lantern. I take the paper sack and the longbar from the Model T's toolbox. Near the entrance it's sand and gravel like a railroad tunnel, then shale farther back, and finally smooth limestone sloping off in three directions. Burke picks the middle pa.s.sage that still gets some light from the entrance, but pretty soon he's bending over and shuffling like an old man, and in another minute he is crawling. Then, after a while, I am crawling too. Just scrunching and twisting for years until it's not fun at all and my hands begin to look like theirs, my elbows raw, and I am not fourteen years old, and I am not a mountain girl anymore. Until he finally stops, saying, "Why don't you scoot on past me while I light the lantern."

And for a moment we are like man and wife.

In the yellow kerosene light I can see the outcropping that's blocked their way and the dirt piles where they've tried to dig around it, but there is no hole, only dust and leavings. Because I am little, I can still sit with my back against the wall and see Burke, who's struggling on his side now, shoulders almost touching floor and ceiling at the same time. He's panting when he puts his face down low into the dirt and shouts under the outcropping, "Lee! Lee, we brung somebody. Gonna pry you loose. Got a blanket for you. Can you hear me? Lee! It's me Burke."

But there is no answer, only a blank black oval underneath the outcropping where you would never think to look. After two days of patient chipping they have made it twelve inches wide. I can feel the sharp-toothed edges with my hand, and suddenly I cannot breathe for thinking about it. I cannot move at all. My mind wants to run away into another place, but I can still feel his hands on my hips, even today, right now, his lover's caress and patient insistence, and then I am through.

I go tumbling down, down like rotten tree limbs under a load of snow, at first only sagging over the edge and then crashing down through rocks and slippery soil until I collide with the very thing that I have imagined. It is soft and wet and full of frightening strength, the hands crawling over my face as I gasp and fight. I'm touching him in a different place every time I push away, and we are tangled together until finally I can relax and back away upslope, while he moans.

"I got him," I whisper to the cave, "I did it, I'm through, I got him," water dripping into water somewhere in the darkness. I'm shaking with cold and fear and effort, shouting, "I got him!" back toward his brother on the other side. The words come out in a jumble, get caught on an inrushing current, and echo. "Pa.s.s me that sack, no, the blanket. No. Wait. Pa.s.s me that lantern first."

It comes through sideways, and I have to relight, but I am slow and steady now. This is not my first cave, my first corpse. It's not my first dark night of day, because I am a mountain girl. I know sunshine and storms. Both my mamma and daddy by the age of nine. And now Lee Bender who is fish-belly white, caught between two boulders. A weak and wasted version of his brother on the other side, he squints and twists away from the light that burns right through the crook of his arm and sets fire to his brain; and I know in that first glance that Lee Bender will die because he has become a part of the cave. I turn the lantern low out of pity. Then from out the shadow his dry voice is rasping, "Who is it?"

And I'm yelling back, "He's okay! He's moving around some."

"Who are you?" Like I am a ghost.

"Rachel Ann Starns from over about Flint Ridge. I come to give you this." And hand him the paper sack.

Lee Bender's arms are free. They are long and thin like spider legs and come dribbling dust so fine that it glistens, slowly, slowly, until he can reach up to where I am reaching down. He takes the sack but cannot unroll the top and tears it open the way a crayfish would tear. And picks at the pieces. Inside it is a crust of cornbread, which he crumbles and lifts to his mouth with fingers gone straight and stiff with cold. And there is a jar half full of b.u.t.termilk, which he takes in sips. "You don't know how thankful I am for this, Rachel Ann Starns. G.o.d's gonna bless you real good."

"He's eating it!" I yell back, and then scramble up to take the blanket that Burke has pa.s.sed through the hole.

But even the good you do.

It makes me cry sometimes. There is loose rock all around, and I have kicked down several big ones, sent sand and gravel sliding, and buried him to his chest. I've made his mouth go small and round, gulping at the air like a fish flopping, but it's done with such slow finality that it takes my breath even now. And I am paralyzed again. But it is what happens in a cave. You are caught. Through the billowing dust you see him pull one arm out of the muck, patiently digging the other one loose handful by handful. You watch as he starts picking away the rocks one by one, delicately, dropping them away into the darkness where they give back no sound at all.

From far away I can hear the trapped man saying, "It ain't the boulders holding me. It ain't the riprap. They's just one tiny little rock. Broke off when I was climbing out this crawl s.p.a.ce and must have fell just right. Cause when I jerked my leg-," he pauses, almost embarra.s.sed I believe, "-hit just clicked into place. Like the closing of a door. It don't even hurt."

So I cover his shoulders with the blanket and brush the filth from his hair and caress his forehead to take away the pain because I already know there is that much in the touch of a woman's hand.

Then just before Burke pulls me through, his brother comes alive to me, saying, "Don't worry, Rachel Ann Starns. You an angel of G.o.d. This ain't such a bad place, you know that now. Tell 'em. With this blanket, little food, Lee Bender can stay down here a month if he has to. I'm not in any pain. You tell 'em that. Tell my brothers I'm not in any pain, just a mite uncomfortable. I been a caver all my life. Been stuck before too. My brothers'll get me out and my daddy, and, besides, lift up your eyes and look."

I have already pa.s.sed through the lantern, but we no longer need the light. I see it hovering over me, as clear as a cloud against a mountain sky, glistening white, as ripply smooth as melted wax. At the top it curves into a half circle, all the rest just flowing away to one side and down so that it looks like a lace window curtain blown sideways in a breeze. You would never think anything made in stone could be this delicate. All along, left to right, it just drips away in creamy folds that have the overlapping delicacy of feathers. "Like an angel's wing," I say.

"That's what it is," whispers Lee Bender. Laying his head down on the blanket that I had brought him and closing his eyes in sleep.

Outside, the holler has changed.

I don't know how they got there so fast. It may have been a telephone somewhere, or the cars. But like magic they are there, twenty or thirty of them when we come out. Helpers helping us down the embankment. Women with baskets of food. Men, relatives I reckon, with their sleeves rolled up, coats hanging from tree limbs. Silent sad-eyed children among the galax and ferns. They are all staring at us like we just clawed our way up from another world. And I am staring back at them in the hush of it all, not realizing that I have taken his hand, and someone behind us is murmuring, like in a dream, "I thought you said hit was a girl."

And there is a flatbed truck now piled with wheelbarrows, rope, shovels, picks. A man handing them down one at a time. I can see where they've brought it down the holler, a green furrow of branches and saplings all bent in the same direction like a fish trap. Straddling the creek. Backed up to the opening as near as they could get it. And farther upstream, between the ruts, men are harnessing two mules, tying heavy ropes to the traces like they come to pull stumps. And somebody is trying to shush a pack of hounds that think it's time to hunt.

Burke speaks to his daddy in low urgent tones. "She done good. Got through and all. Next thing is maybe get some fellas in there with cold chisels, widen that hole."

He nods, fumbling with his pocket watch. "I don't know," he says. "I don't know what's next to do. I just want him outta there." Then closes the cover with a snap, like he could stop time if he clicked fast enough and buried it deep enough in his pocket. But it is on a chain, and the chain is hooked to his overalls.

Across the creek in a ragged clearing is a man whose voice draws stragglers in ones and twos. It is a child's voice, tinny and distant, and it is a child's body except for the face, where time and pain have done their work. He stands upon a stump, both arms raised to the sky, both hands clamped upon a ragged black book, piping in that high radio voice, "You know, Lord G.o.d, that this world is rotton and corrup'. Undergirt with treachery. And that the earth that abideth forever will claim any who will not lift up their eyes, amen. Surely and purely it is set forth as a sign among us, and so we pray this afternoon for your fallen servant Lee, ask that you smite the rock and stay the hand and restore him once again to the love a his family, amen. Bring forth a miracle as in the days of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen."

"What's going on here?" says Burke.

"Name of Reverent Josephus Harwell," says Asa. "He come with Thomas and Louisa, I reckon. Took up in that clearing as soon's he got here midafternoon. Been gospel slinging ever since. Say one time he was with the carnival till he got saved."

"He ain't no bigger'n her. Whyn't you send him down?"

The wind smothers the answer, driving the preacher's words higher and whipping his hair to one side till his words come back to earth as a chant. "They ain't n.o.body here can take a man out of the ground nor loose the grip a Satan. They's only one way to get lifted up, and we going to pray for Lee Bender and Brother Lucas and his family, yes we are, until there's enough G.o.d in this holler to split open the earth and lay a golden staircase all the way down to that poor boy. We gonna bless every man that goes into that hillside, every shovel, pickax, every inch of rope, every woman that brung food, every neighbor who brung hope. We gonna bless every mule and wagon that comes down that road and every free breath of air we take. Because why? Because the earth under our feet is a empty sh.e.l.l, amen."

"Fine," Burke manages. "Just pray it don't rain first. And that you can find me two men with hammers and chisels."

"We can't have that kind of talk, Burke." Lucas seems like a man who's come back from a far place. "I don't care how tired and wore out you are."

"Look, it ain't the devil that's got hold of him. It's a rock. That's all."

After a time they made a half circle before the stump, and a few of the men who'd been unloading tools drifted across the creek and took up with the women and children. Someone began a low moaning of a tune that followed exactly the preacher's incantation. A family just arriving went straight to the gathering without even looking once toward the cave. And after a time Lucas Bender and the twins crossed the creek and sat, hands folded in desperate prayer.

We stay behind.

Burke says again, "You done good an' I thank you. I don't reckon we can get you home before dark, but you welcome to stay with one of the families. People say you practically live in the woods anyhow."

"I live with my aunts."