Year's Best Scifi 2 Part 39

"The jay felt a little guilty about not having spotted the coyote sooner, so he shouted to the jackrabbit, 'You okay? You going to make it?'

"And the jackrabbit called back, 'I'll make it!'

"They went around the mesquite eight or ten times, and it seemed to the jay that the coyote was gaining at every pa.s.s. He got seriously worried then, and he shouted down, 'You sure you're going to make it?'

"The jackrabbit called back, 'I'm going to make it!'

"A few more pa.s.ses, and the coyote was snapping at the jackrabbit's tail. The jay was worried sick by then, and he shouted, 'Rabbit, how do you know you're going to make it?' And the jackrabbit called back, 'h.e.l.l, I've got to make it!' "

Brook said, "You mean you're like that rabbit."

"Right." Emery put the transmission into neutral and set the parking brake. "I've got to make it, and I will."

"Why are we stopping?"

"Because we're here." He opened his flap and got out.

"I don't see the car."

"You will in a minute. Bring the flash."

They had to climb a drift before they found it, nearly buried in snow with its hood still up. Emery reachedinside, took Jan's keys out of the ignition lock, and handed them to Brook. "Here, check the trunk. They may not have noticed the keyhole behind the medallion."

A moment later, as he leaned against the snowcovered side of the car, he heard Brook say, "It's here!

Everything's still here!"

"I'll help you." He forced himself to walk.

"Just a couple little bags. I can carry them." Brook slammed down the trunk lid so that he would not see Whatever was being left behind. A stereo, Emery decided. Possibly a TV. He hated TV, and decided to say nothing.

"You want the keys?"

"You keep them."

"I guess we'll have to call a tow truck when the road's clear. They've taken a lot of stuff out of here."

Brook was at the front of the Lincoln, s.h.i.+ning the flashlight into its engine compartment.

"Sure," Emery said, and started back to the jeep.

When he woke the next morning, bacon was frying and coffee perking on the little propane stove. He sat up, discovering that his right side was stiff and painful. "Brook?"

There was no answer.

The cabin was cold, in spite of the blue flames and the friendly odors. He pulled the wool s.h.i.+rt he had put on after Brook had bandaged his wound over the Duofold underwear he had slept in, pushed his legs into the trousers he had dropped on the floor beside his bunk, and stood up. His boots were under the little table, the stockings he had worn beside them. He put the stockings into his laundry bag, got out a clean pair and pulled them on, then tugged on, laced, and tied his boots.

The coffee had perked enough. He turned off the burner and transferred the bacon onto the cracked green plate Brook had apparently planned to use. The bacon still smelled good; he felt that he should eat a piece, but he had no appet.i.te.

Had Brook set off on foot to fetch whatever it was that he had left in the Lincoln's trunk? Not with food on the stove. Brook would have turned down the fire under the coffeepot and drunk a cup before he left, taken up the bacon and eaten half of it, probably with bread, b.u.t.ter, and jam.

There was no toaster, but Brook had offered to toast bread in front of the fire the night before. That fire was nearly out, hardly more than embers. Brook had gotten up, started the coffee and put on the bacon, and gone outside for firewood.

Lord, Emery thought, you don't owe me a thing-I know that. But please.

They had taken Aileen and had, perhaps, been bringing her back when they had encountered him. They might very well have taken Brook as well; if they had, they might bring him back in a day or two.

He found that he was staring at the plate of bacon. He set it on the table and put on his mackinaw and second-best cap. Had his best one-the one that the women had not let him retrieve-been on the front seat of Jan's Lincoln? He had not even looked.

Snow had reached the sills of the windows, but it was not snowing as hard as it had the day before. Thepath plowed by Brook's feet and legs showed plainly, crossing the little back porch, turning south for the stacked wood under the eaves, then retraced for a short distance. Brook had seen something; or more probably, had heard a noise from the cabin's north side; where the jeep was parked. It was difficult, very difficult, for Emery to step off the porch, following the path that Brook had broken through the deep snow.

Brook's body sprawled before the front b.u.mper, a stick of firewood near its right hand. The blood around its head might, Emery told himself, have come from a superficial scalp wound. Brook might be alive, though unconscious. Even as he crouched to look more closely, he knew it was not true.

He closed his eyes and stood up. They had taken his ax as well as his rifle; he had worried about the rifle and had scarcely given a thought to the ax, yet the ax had done this.

The dead coyote still lay in back of the front seat of the plundered jeep. He carried it to the south side of the cabin; and where firewood had been that autumn, contrived a rough bier from half a dozen sticks.

Satisfied with the effect, he built a larger bier of the same kind for his son, arranged the not-yet-frozen body on it, and covered it with a clean sheet that he weighted with a few more sticks. It would be necessary to call the sheriff if the telephone was still working, and the sheriff might very well accuse him of Brook's murder.

Inside, after a momentary hesitation, he bolted the doors. A calendar hung the year before provided the number of the only undertaker in Voylestown.

"You have reached Merton's Funeral Parlor. We are not able to be with you at this time..."

He waited for the tone, then spoke quickly. "This's Emery Bainbridge." They could get his address from the directory, as well as his number. "My son's dead. I want you to handle the arrangements. Contact me when you can." A second or two of silence, as if in memory of Brook, and then the dial tone. He pressed in the sheriff's number.

"Sheriff Ron Wilber's office."

"This is Emery Bainbridge again. My son, Brook, has been killed."

"Address?"

"Five zero zero north, twenty-six seventy-seven west-that's on Route E-E, about five miles from Haunted Lake."

"How did at happen, Mister Bainbridge?"

He wanted to say that one of the women had stood against the wall of his cabin, holding his ax, and waited for Brook to come around the corner; it had been apparent from the lines plowed through the deep snow, but mentioning it at this time would merely make the investigating officer suspect him. He said, "He was. .h.i.t in the head with my ax, I think. They took my ax yesterday."

"Yes, I remember. Don't move the body, we'll get somebody out there as soon as we can."

"I already have. When-"

"Then don't move it any more. Don't touch anything else."

"When will you have someone out here?"He sensed, rather than heard, her indrawn breath.

"This afternoon, Emery. We'll try to get one of the deputies there this afternoon."

If she had not been lying, Emery reflected, she would have called him "Mister Bainbridge." He thanked her and hung up, then leaned back in his chair, looking from the telephone to his journal. He should write up his journal, and there was a great deal to write. There had been a cellular phone in Jan's car. Had they taken it? He had not noticed.

He picked up the telephone again but hung it up without pressing in a number. His black sports watch lay under his bunk. He retrieved it, noting the date and time.

09:17 Jan came yesterday, with Brook and the twins. Three small, dark women in hoods tried to strip her car. There was a tussle with Jan and the children.

He stared down at the pen. It was exactly the color of Brook's blood in the snow.

Aileen ran away. I searched for her in Jan's car, which I was able to trade for her. One of the women shot me. They do not understand English.

The red pen had stopped.

His computer back home-he corrected the thought: his computer at Jan's had a spell checker; this pen had none, yet it had sounded a warning without one. Was it possible that the women spoke English after all? On overseas trips he had met people whose English he could scarcely understand. He tried to recall what the women had said and what he had said, and failed with both.

Yet something, some neglected corner of his subconscious, suspected that the women had in fact been speaking English, of a peculiar variety.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote.

He had memorized the lines in high school-how long had it been? But no, it had been much longer than that, had been more than six hundred years since a great poet had written in a beautiful rhythmic dialect that had at first seemed as alien as German. "When April, with his sweet breath/The drought of March has pierced to the root."

And the language was still changing, still evolving.

He picked up the telephone, fairly sure that he remembered Jan's cellular number, and pressed it in.

A lonely ringing, far away. In Jan's snow-covered black Lincoln? Could a cellular car phone operate without the car's battery? There were bag phones as well, telephones you could carry in a briefcase, so perhaps it could. If the women had taken it to pieces, there would have been a recorded message telling him that the number was no longer in service.

He had lost count of the rings when someone picked up the receiver. "h.e.l.lo," he said. "h.e.l.lo?" Even to him, it sounded inane.

No one spoke on the other end. As slowly and distinctly as he could, he said, "I am the man whose son you killed, and I am coming to kill you. If you want to explain before I do, you have to do it now."

No voice spoke."Very well. You can call me if you want." He gave his number, speaking more slowly and distinctly than ever. "But I won't be here much longer."

Or at least, they do not speak an English that I can understand. I should have said that I was not hurt badly. Brook bandaged it. I have not seen a doctor. Maybe I should.

He felt the bandage and found it was stiff with blood. Changing it, he decided, would waste a great deal of valuable time, and might actually make things worse.

Brook and I took Jan and the twins into town. Before I woke up this morning, the women killed Brook, outside in the snow.

There was a little stand of black-willow saplings down by the creek. He waded through the snow to them, cut six with his hunting knife, and carried them back to the cabin.

There he cut four sticks, each three times as long as his foot, and tied their ends in pairs with twine.

Shorter sticks, notched at both ends, spread them; he tied the short sticks in place with more twine, then bound the crude snowshoes that he had made to his boots, wrapping each boot tightly with a dozen turns.

He was eight car ten yards from the cabin-walking over the snow rather than through it-when his ears caught the faint ringing of his telephone. He returned to the cabin to answer it, leaving the maul he had been carrying on the porch.

"Mister Bainbridge? I'm Ralph Merton. Ralph Merton's voice was sepulchral. "May I extend my sympathy to you and your loved ones?"

Emery sighed and sat down, his snowshoed feet necessarily flat on the floor. "Yes, Mister Merton. It was good of you to return my call. I didn't think you'd be in today."

"I'm afraid I'm not, Mister Bainbridge. I have an-ah-device that lets me call my office at the parlor and get my messages. May 1 ask if your son was under a doctor's care?"

"No, Brook was perfectly healthy, as far as I know."

"A doctor hasn't seen your son?"

"No one has, except me." After a few seconds' silence, Emery added, "And the woman who killed him. I think there was another woman with her, in which case the second woman would have seen him, too.

Not that it matters, I suppose."

Ralph Merton cleared his throat. "A doctor will have to examine your son and issue a death certificate before we can come, Mister Bainbridge."

"Of course. I'd forgotten."

"If you have a family doctor...?"

"No," Emery said.

"In that case," Ralph Merton sounded slightly more human, "I could phone Doctor Ormond for you.

He's a young man, very active. He'll be there just as soon as he can get through, I'm sure."

"Thank you," Emery said, "I'd appreciate that very much.""I'll do it as soon as I hang up. Would you let us know as soon as you have a death certificate, Mister Bainbridge?"

"Certainly."

"Wonderful. Now, as to the-hah-present arrangements? Is your son indoors?"

"Out in the snow. I put a sheet over his body, but I'd think it would be covered with snow by this time."

"Wonderful. I'll call Doctor Ormond the moment I hang up, Mister Bainbridge. When you've got the death certificate, you can rely on Merton's for everything. You have my sympathy. I have two sons myself."

"Thank you," Emery repeated, and returned the receiver to its cradle.

The cabin still smelled faintly of bacon and coffee. It might not be wise to leave with an empty stomach, was certainly unwise to leave with a low flame under the coffeepot, as he had been about to do. He turned the burner off, got a clean mug (somewhat hampered by his home-made snowshoes), poured himself a cup, sipped, and made himself eat two slices of bacon. Three more, between two slices of rye bread, became a crude sandwich; he stuffed it into a pocket of his mackinaw.

The maul waited beside the front door; he locked the door and started off over the snow a second time.

When the snow covered road had led him nearly out of sight of the cabin, he thought he heard the faint and lonely ringing of his telephone again. Presumably that was Doctor Ormond; Emery shrugged and trudged on.

The front door of the dark cabin seemed very substantial; after examining it, Emery circled around to the back. Drifted snow had risen nearly to the level of the hasp and padlock that secured the door.

Positioning his feet as firmly as he could in snowshoes,Jhe swung his maul like a golf club at the hasp.

At-Ahe third blow, the screws tore loose and the door crashed inward.

Clambering through the violated doorway, he reflected that he did not know who owned this cabin now or what he looked like, that he would not recognize the owner he intended to rob if he were to meet him on the street. Robbery would be easier if only he could imagine himself apologizing and explaining, and offering to pay-though no apology or explanation would be feasible if he succeeded. He would be a vigilante then; and the law, which extended every courtesy to murderers, detested and destroyed anyone who killed or even resisted them. He would have to find out this cabin's address, he decided, and send cash by mail.

Of course, it was possible that there were no guns here, in which case Brook's murderers would presumably kill him too, before he could do any such thing. They might kill him, for that matter, even if- Before he could complete the thought, he saw the gun safe, a steel cabinet painted to look like wood, with a combination lock. Half a dozen blows from the maul knocked off the k.n.o.b. Two dozen more so battered the three-sixteenths-inch steel door that he could work the claws of the big ripping hammer he found in a toolbox into the opening. The battered mechanism was steel, the hammer-handle fibergla.s.s; for a few seconds that seemed far longer, he felt certain the handle would break.

A rivet somewhere in the gun safe surrendered with a pop-the sweetest sound imaginable. A slight repositioning of the hammer and another heave, and the door ground back.