"Is Richie Grenadeau really dead, do you think?" Beaver asks.
"I don't know and I don't care," Jonesy says. He looks at Henry. "We'll call Duddits, okay--I've got a phone and we can bill the charges to my number."
"Your own phone," Pete says. "You lucky duck. Your folks spoil you fuckin rotten, Gary."
Calling him Gary usually gets under his skin, but not this morning--Jonesy is too preoccupied. "It was for my birthday and I have to pay the long-distance out of my allowance, so let's keep it short. And after that, this never happened--never happened, you got that?"
And they all nod. Never happened. Never fucking hap--
3
A gust of wind pushed Henry forward, almost into the electrified compound fence. He came back to himself, shaking off the memory like a heavy coat. It couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time (of course, the time for some memories was never convenient). He had been waiting for Underhill, freezing his katookis off and waiting for his only chance to get out of here, and Underhill could have walked right by him while he stood daydreaming, leaving him up shit creek without a paddle.
Only Underhill hadn't gone past. He was standing on the other side of the fence, hands in his pockets, looking at Henry. Snowflakes landed on the transparent, buglike bulb of the mask he wore, were melted by the warmth of his breath, and ran down its surface like . . .
Like Beaver's tears that day, Henry thought.
"You ought to go in the barn with the rest of them," Underhill said. "You'll turn into a snowman out here."
Henry's tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. His life quite literally depended on what he said to this man, and he could think of no way to get started. Couldn't even loosen his tongue.
And why bother? the voice inside inquired--the voice of darkness, his old friend. Really and truly, why bother? Why not just let them do what you were going to do to yourself, anyway?
Because it wasn't just him anymore. Yet he still couldn't speak.
Underhill stood where he was a moment longer, looking at him. Hands in pockets. Hood thrown back to expose his short dark-blond hair. Snow melting on the mask the soldiers wore and the detainees did not, because the detainees would not be needing them; for the detainees, as for the grayboys, there was a final solution.
Henry struggled to speak and could not, could not. Ah God, it should have been Jonesy here, not him; Jonesy had always been better with his mouth. Underhill was going to walk away, leaving him with a lot of could-have-beens and might-have-beens.
But Underhill stayed a moment longer.
"I'm not surprised you knew my name, Mr. . . . Henreid? Is your name Henreid?"
"Devlin. It's my first name you're picking up. I'm Henry Devlin." Moving very carefully, Henry thrust his hand through the gap between a strand of barbed wire and one of electrified smoothwire. After Underhill did nothing but look at it expressionlessly for five seconds or so, Henry pulled his hand back to his part of the newly drawn world, feeling foolish and telling himself not to be such an idiot, it wasn't as if he'd been snubbed at a cocktail party.
Once that was done, Underhill nodded pleasantly, as if they were at a cocktail party instead of out here in a shrieking storm, illuminated by the newly installed security lights.
"You knew my name because the alien presence in Jefferson Tract has caused a low-level telepathic effect." Underhill smiled. "Sounds silly when you say it right out, doesn't it? But it's true. The effect is transient, harmless, and too shallow to be good for much except party games, and we're a little too busy tonight for those."
Henry's tongue came finally, blessedly, unstuck. "You didn't come over here in a snowstorm because I knew your name," Henry said. "You came over because I knew your wife's name. And your daughter's."
Underhill's smile didn't falter. "Maybe I did," he said. "In any case, I think it's time we both got under cover and got some rest--it's been a long day."
Underhill began walking, but his way took him alongside the fence, toward the other parked trailers and campers. Henry kept pace, although he had to work in order to do it; there was nearly a foot of snow on the ground now, it was drifting, and no one had tramped it down over here on the dead man's side.
"Mr. Underhill. Owen. Stop a minute and listen to me. I've got something important to tell you."
Underhill kept walking along the path on his side of the fence (which was also the dead man's side; did Underhill not know that?), head down against the wind, still wearing that faintly pleasant smile. And the awful thing, Henry knew, was that Underhill wanted to stop. It was just that Henry had not, so far, given him a reason to do so.
"Kurtz is crazy," Henry said. He was still keeping pace but he was panting audibly now, his exhausted legs screaming. "But he's crazy like a fox."
Underhill kept walking, head down and little smile in place under the idiotic mask. If anything, he walked faster. Soon Henry would have to run in order to keep up on his side of the fence. If running was still possible for him.
"You'll turn the machine-guns on us," Henry panted. "Bodies go in the barn . . . barn gets doused with gasoline . . . probably from Old Man Gosselin's own pump, why waste government issue . . . and then ploof, up in smoke . . . two hundred . . . four hundred . . . it'll smell like a VFW pig-roast in hell . . ."
Underhill's smile was gone and he walked faster still. Henry somehow found the strength to trot, gasping for air and fighting his way through knee-high snowdunes. The wind was keen against his throbbing face. Like a blade.
"But Owen . . . that's you, right? . . . Owen? . . . you remember that old rhyme . . . the one that goes 'Big fleas . . . got little fleas . . . to bite em . . . and so on and so on . . . and so on ad infinitum?' . . . that's here and that's you . . . because Kurtz has got his own cadre . . . the man under him, I think his name is Johnson . . ."
Underhill gave him a single sharp look, then walked faster than ever. Henry somehow managed to keep up, but he didn't think he would be able to much longer. He had a stitch in his side. It was hot and getting hotter. "That was supposed . . . to be your job . . . the second part of the clean-up . . . Imperial Valley, that's the . . . code name . . . mean anything to you?"
Henry saw it didn't. Kurtz must never have told Underhill about the operation that would wipe out most of Blue Group. Imperial Valley meant exactly squat to Owen Underhill, and now, in addition to the stitch, Henry had what felt like an iron band around his chest, squeezing and squeezing.
"Stop . . . Jesus, Underhill . . . can't you . . . ?"
Underhill just kept striding along. Underhill wanted to keep his last few illusions. Who could blame him?
"Johnson . . . a few others . . . at least one's a woman . . . could have been you too if you hadn't fucked up . . . you crossed the line, that's what he thinks . . . not the first time, either . . . you did it before, at some place like Bossa Nova . . ."
That earned Henry a sudden sharp look. Progress? Maybe.
"In the end I think . . . even Johnson goes . . . only Kurtz leaves here alive . . . the rest . . . nothing but a pile of ashes and bones . . . your fucking telepathy doesn't . . . tell you that, does it . . . your little parlor-trick mind-reading . . . won't even . . . fucking touch . . . that . . ."
The stitch in his side deepened and sank into his right armpit like a claw. At the same time his feet slipped and he went flailing headfirst into a snowdrift. His lungs tore furiously for air and instead got a great gasp of powdery snow.
Henry flailed to his knees, coughing and choking, and saw Underhill's back just disappearing into the wall of blowing snow. Not knowing what he was going to say, knowing only that it was his last chance, he screamed: "You tried to piss on Mr. Rapeloew's toothbrush and when you couldn't do that you broke their plate! Broke their plate and ran away! Just like you're running away now, you fucking coward!"
Ahead of him, barely visible in the snow, Owen Underhill stopped.
4
For a moment he only stood there, his back to Henry, who k
nelt panting like a dog in the snow with melting, icy water running down his burning face. Henry was aware in a way that was both distant and immediate that the scratch on his leg where the byrus was growing had begun to itch.
At last Underhill turned around and came back. "How do you know about the Rapeloews? The telepathy is fading. You shouldn't be able to get that deep."
"I know a lot," Henry said. He got to his feet and then stood there, gasping and coughing. "Because it runs deep in me. I'm different. My friends and I, we were all different. There were four of us. Two are dead. I'm in here. The fourth one . . . Mr. Underhill, the fourth one is your problem. Not me, not the people you've got in the barn or the ones you're still bringing in, not your Blue Group or Kurtz's Imperial Valley cadre. Only him." He struggled, not wanting to say the name--Jonesy was the one to whom he had been the closest, Beaver and Pete were great, but only Jonesy could run with him mind for mind, book for book, idea for idea; only Jonesy also had the knack of dreaming outside the lines as well as seeing the line. But Jonesy was gone, wasn't he? Henry was quite sure of that. He had been there, a tiny bit of him had been there when the redblack cloud passed Henry, but by now his old friend would have been eaten alive. His heart might still beat and his eyes might still see, but the essential Jonesy was as dead as Pete and the Beav.
"Jonesy's your problem, Mr. Underhill. Gary Jones, of Brookline, Massachusetts."
"Kurtz is a problem, too." Underhill spoke too softly to be heard over the howling wind, but Henry heard him, anyway--heard him in his mind.
Underhill looked around. Henry followed the shift of his head and saw a few men running down the makeshift avenue between the campers and trailer boxes--no one close. Yet the entire area around the store and the barn was mercilessly bright, and even with the wind he could hear revving engines, the stuttery roar of generators, and men yelling. Someone was giving orders through a bullhorn. The overall effect was eerie, as if the two of them had been trapped by the storm in a place filled with ghosts. The running men even looked like ghosts as they faded into the dancing sheets of snow.
"We can't talk here," Underhill said. "Listen to me, and don't make me repeat a single word, buck."
And in Henry's head, where there was now so much input that most of it was tangled into an incomprehensible stew, a thought from Owen Underhill's mind suddenly rose clear and plain: Buck. His word. I can't believe I used his word.
"I'm listening," Henry said.
5
The shed was on the far side of the compound, as far from the barn as it was possible to get, and although the outside was as brilliantly lit as the rest of this hellish concentration camp, the inside was dark and smelled sweetly of old hay. And something else, something a little more acrid.
There were four men and a woman sitting with their backs against the shed's far wall. They were all dressed in orange hunting togs, and they were passing a joint. There were only two windows in the shed, one facing in toward the corral, the other facing out toward the perimeter fence and the woods beyond. The glass was dirty, and cut the merciless white glare of the sodium lights a little. In the dimness, the faces of the pot-smoking prisoners looked gray, dead already.
"You want a hit?" the one with the joint asked. He spoke in a strained, miserly voice, holding the smoke in, but he held the joint out willingly enough. It was a bomber, Henry saw, big as a panatela.
"No. I want you all to get out of here."
They looked at him, uncomprehending. The woman was married to the man currently holding the joint. The guy on her left was her brother-in-law. The other two were just along for the ride.
"Go back to the barn," Henry said.
"No way," one of the other men said. "Too crowded in there. We prefer to be more exclusive. And since we were here first, I suggest that if you don't want to be sociable, you should be the one to--"
"I've got it," Henry said. He put a hand on the tee-shirt knotted around his leg. "Byrus. What they call Ripley. Some of you may have it . . . I think you do, Charles--" He pointed at the fifth man, burly in his parka and balding.
"No!" Charles cried, but the others were already scrambling away from him, the one with the Cambodian cigar (his name was Darren Chiles and he was from Newton, Massachusetts) being careful to hold onto his smoke.
"Yeah, you do," Henry said. "Major league. So do you, Mona. Mona? No, Marsha. It's Marsha."
"I don't!" she said. She got up, pressing her back against the shed wall and looking at Henry with large, terrified eyes. Doe's eyes. Soon all the does up here would be dead, and Marsha would be dead, as well. Henry hoped she could not see that thought in his mind. "I'm clean, mister, we're all clean in here except you!"
She looked at her husband, who was not big, but bigger than Henry. They all were, actually. Not taller, maybe, but bigger.
"Throw him out, Dare."
"There are two types of Ripley," Henry said, stating as fact what he only believed . . . but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. "Call them Ripley Prime and Ripley Secondary. I'm pretty sure that if you didn't get a hot dose--in something you ate or inhaled or something that went live into an open wound--you can get better. You can beat it."
Now they were all looking at him with those big doe eyes, and Henry felt a moment of surpassing despair. Why couldn't he just have had a nice quiet suicide?
"I've got Ripley Prime," he said. He unknotted the tee-shirt. None of them would do more than glance at the rip in Henry's snow-powdered jeans, but Henry took a good big look for all of them. The wound made by the turnsignal stalk had now filled up with byrus. Some of the strands were three inches long, their tips wavering like kelp in a tidal current. He could feel the roots of the stuff working in steadily, deeper and deeper, itching and foaming and fizzing. Trying to think. That was the worst of it--it was trying to think.
Now they were moving toward the shed door, and Henry expected them to bolt as soon as they caught a clear whiff of the cold air. Instead they paused.
"Mister, can you help us?" Marsha asked in a trembling child's voice. Darren, her husband, put his arm around her.
"I don't know," Henry said. "Probably not . . . but maybe. Go on, now. I'll be out of here in half an hour, maybe less, but probably it's best if you stay in the barn with the others."
"Why?" asked Darren Chiles from Newton.
And Henry, who had only a ghost of an idea--nothing resembling a plan--said, "I don't know. I just think it is."
They went out, leaving Henry in possession of the shed.
6
Beneath the window facing the perimeter fence was an ancient bale of hay. Darren Chiles had been sitting on it when Henry came in (as the one with the dope, Chiles had rated the most comfortable seat), and now Henry took his place. He sat with his hands on his knees, feeling immediately sleepy in spite of the voices tumbling around in his head and the deep, spreading itch in his left leg (it was starting in his mouth, as well, where he had lost one of his teeth).
He heard Underhill coming before Underhill actually spoke from outside the window; heard the approach of his mind.
"I'm in the lee of the wind and mostly in the shadow of the building," Underhill said. "I'm having a smoke. If someone comes along, you're not in there."
"Okay."
"Lie to me, I'll walk away and you'll never in your short life speak to me again, out loud or . . . otherwise."
"Okay."
"How did you get rid of the people in there?"
"Why?" Henry would have said he was too tired to be angry, but that seemed not to be the case. "Was it some kind of goddam test?"
"Don't be a jerk."
"I told them I've got Ripley Prime, which is the truth. They scatted in a hurry." Henry paused. "You've got it too, don't you?"
"What makes you think so?" Henry could detect no strain in Underhill's voice, and as a psychiatrist, he was familiar with the signs. Whatever else Underhill might be, Henry had an idea that he was a man with a tremendously cool head, and
that was a step in the right direction. Also, he thought, it can't hurt if he understands he really has nothing to lose.
"It's around your fingernails, isn't it? And a little in one ear."
"You'd wow em in Vegas, buddy." Henry saw Underhill's hand go up, with a cigarette between the gloved fingers. He guessed the wind would end up smoking most of that one.
"You get Primary direct from the source. I'm pretty sure Secondary comes from touching something that's growing it--tree, moss, deer, dog, another person. You catch that kind like you catch poison ivy. This isn't anything your own medical technicians don't know. For all I can tell, I got the information from them. My head's like a goddam satellite dish with everything beaming in on Free Preview and nothing blocked out. I can't tell where half of this stuff's coming from and it doesn't matter. Now here's some stuff your med-techs don't know. The grays call the red growth byrus, a word that means 'the stuff of life.' Under some circumstances, the Prime version of it can grow the implants."
"The shit-weasels, you mean."
"Shit-weasels, that's good. I like that. They spring from the byrus, then reproduce by laying eggs. They spread, lay more eggs, spread again. That's the way it's supposed to work, anyway. Here, most of the eggs go dead. I have no idea if it's the cold weather, the atmosphere, or something else. But in our environment, Underhill, it's all about the byrus. It's all they've got that works."
"The stuff of life."
"Uh-huh, but listen: the grays are having big problems here, which is probably why they hung around so long--half a century--before making their move. The weasels, for instance. They're supposed to be saprophytes . . . do you know what that means?"
"Henry . . . that's you, right? Henry? . . . Henry, does this have any bearing on our present--"
"It has plenty of bearing on our present situation. And unless you want to own a large part of the responsibility for the end of all life on Spaceship Earth--except for a lot of interstellar kudzu, that is--I advise you to shut up and listen."
A pause. Then: "I'm listening."
"Saprophytes are beneficial parasites. We have them living in our guts, and we deliberately swallow more in some dairy products. Sweet acidophilus milk, for instance, and yogurt. We give the bugs a place to live and they give us something in return. In the case of dairy bacteria, improved digestion. The weasels, under normal circumstances--normal on some other world, I guess, where the ecology differs in ways I can't even guess at--grow to a size maybe no bigger than the bowl of a teaspoon. I think that in females they may interfere with reproduction, but they don't kill. Not normally. They just live in the bowel. We give them food, they give us telepathy. That's supposed to be the trade. Only they also turn us into televisions. We are Grayboy TV."