The Weird Part 153

'You don't sleep well either, huh,' she said.

'Nope. Not since Bangladesh.'

'That long. Huh.'

He propped himself on his elbow and studied her. 'I've been considering my options lately. I'm thinking it might be time to hang up my spurs. Go live in the Bahamas.'

She said, 'You're too young to go.' That was her mocking tone.

'You too.'

She didn't say anything for a while. Then, 'Rich, you ever get the feeling you're being watched?'

'Like when you snuck in here while I was sleeping? Funny you should mention it...'

'Rich.'

He saw that she was serious. 'Sometimes, yeah.'

'Well you are. Always. I want you to keep that in mind.'

'Okay. Will it help?'

'Good question.'

The room darkened, bit by bit. He said, 'You think you would've made it back to the barge?' He couldn't distance himself from her cry as she flailed overboard and hit the water like a stone. There were crocodiles everywhere. No one moved. The whole crew was frozen in that moment between disbelief and action. He had shoved the camera at, who? Beasley. He had done that and then gone in and gotten her. Blood warm water, brown with mud. He did not remember much of the rest. The camera caught it all.

'No,' she said. 'Not even close.'

He climbed over the bed and hugged her. She was warm. He pressed his face into her hair. Her hair trapped the faint, cloying odor of sickness. 'I'm so f.u.c.king sorry,' he said.

She didn't say anything. She rubbed his shoulder.

That night was quiet at the Moorehead Estate. There was a subdued dinner and afterward some drinks. Everybody chatted about the good old days. The real ones and the imaginary ones too. Phillips and Montague disappeared early on and took their men-at-arms with them. Nadine sat aloof. She held onto a hardback one of Tos.h.i.+'s long out of print treatises on insect behavior and ecological patterns. Partridge could tell she was only pretending to look at it.

Later, after lights out, Partridge roused from a dream of drowning in something that wasn't quite water. His name was whispered from the foot of the bed. He fumbled upright in the smothering dark. 'Nadine?' He clicked on the lamp and saw he was alone.

It rained in the morning. Tos.h.i.+ was undeterred. He put on a slicker and took a drive in the Land Rover to move the radio telescopes and other equipment into more remote fields. A truckload of the burly, grim laborers followed. The technicians trudged about their daily routine, indifferent to the weather. Campbell disappeared with Phillips and Montague. Nadine remained in her room. Partridge spent the morning playing poker with Beasley and Gertz on the rear porch. They drank whiskey coffee for Beasley and watched water drip from the eaves and thunderheads roll across the horizon trailing occasional whip-cracks of lightning. Then it stopped raining and the sun transformed the landscape into a ma.s.s of illuminated rust and gla.s.s.

Partridge went for a long walk around the property to clear his head and savor the clean air. The sun was melting toward the horizon when Beasley found him dozing in the shade of an oak. It was a huge tree with yellowing leaves and exposed roots. The roots crawled with pill bugs. Between yawns Partridge observed the insects go about their tiny business.

'C'mon. You gotta see the ghost town before it gets dark,' Beasley said. Partridge didn't bother to protest. Nadine waited in the jeep. She wore tortoise sh.e.l.l sungla.s.ses and a red scarf in her hair. He decided she looked better in a scarf than Tos.h.i.+ ever had, no question. Partridge opened his mouth and Beasley gave him a friendly shove into the front pa.s.senger seat.

'Sulk, sulk, sulk!' Nadine laughed at him. 'In the garden, eating worms?'

'Close enough,' Partridge said and hung on as Beasley gunned the jeep through a break in the fence line and zoomed along an overgrown track that was invisible until they were right on top of it. The farm became a picture on a stamp and then they pa.s.sed through a belt of paper birches and red maples. They crossed a ramshackle bridge that spanned an ebon stream and drove into a clearing. Beasley ground gears until they gained the crown of a long, tabletop hill. He killed the engine and coasted to a halt amid tangled gra.s.s and wild-flowers and said, 'Orren Towne. Died circa 1890s.'

Below their vantage, remnants of a village occupied the banks of a shallow valley. If Orren Towne was dead its death was the living kind. A score of saltbox houses and the brooding hulk of a Second Empire church waited somberly. Petrified roofs were dappled by the shadows of moving clouds. Facades were brim with the ephemeral light of the magic hour. Beasley's walkie-talkie crackled and he stepped aside to answer the call.

Nadine walked part way down the slope and stretched her arms. Her muscles stood forth in cords of sinew and gristle. She looked over her shoulder at Partridge. Her smile was alien. 'Don't you wish you'd brought your camera?'

The brain is a camera. What Partridge really wished was that he had gone to his room and slept. His emotions were on the verge of running amok. The animal fear from his daydreams had sneaked up again. He smelled the musk of his own adrenaline and sweat. The brain is a camera and once it sees what it sees there's no taking it back. He noticed another of Tos.h.i.+'s bizarre radio dishes perched on a bluff. The antenna was focused upon the deserted buildings. 'I don't like this place,' he said. But she kept walking and he trailed along. It was cooler among the houses. The earth was trampled into concrete and veined with minerals. Nothing organic grew and no birds sang. The subtly deformed structures were encased in a transparent resin that lent the town the aspect of a waxworks. He thought it might be sh.e.l.lac.

Shadows fell across Partridge's path. Open doorways and sugar spun windows fronted darkness. These doors and windows were as unwelcoming as the throats of ancient wells, the mouths of caves. He breathed heavily. 'How did Tos.h.i.+ do this? Why did he do this?'

Nadine laughed and took his hand playfully. Hers was dry and too warm, like a leather wallet left in direct sunlight. 'Tos.h.i.+ only discovered it. Do you seriously think he and Howard are capable of devising something this extraordinary?'

'No.'

'Quite a few people spent their lives in this valley. Decent farming and hunting in these parts. The Mooreheads owned about everything. They owned a brewery and a mill down the road, near their estate. All those busy little worker bees going about their jobs, going to church on Sunday. I'm sure it was a cla.s.sic Hallmark. Then it got cold. One of those long winters that never ends. Nothing wanted to grow and the game disappeared. The house burned. Sad for the Mooreheads. Sadder for the people who depended on them. The family circled its wagons to rebuild the mansion, but the community never fully recovered. Orren Towne was here today, gone tomorrow. At least that's the story we hear told by the old timers at the Mad Rooster over cribbage and a pint of stout.' Nadine stood in the shade of the church, gazing up, up at the crucifix. 'This is how it will all be someday. Empty buildings. Empty skies. The gra.s.s will come and eat everything we ever made. The waters will swallow it. It puts my situation into perspective, lemme tell you.'

'These buildings should've fallen down. Somebody's gone through a lot of trouble to keep this like '

'A museum. Yeah, somebody has. This isn't the only place it's been done, either.'

'Places like this? Where?' Partridge said. He edged closer to the bright center of the village square.

'I don't know. They're all over if you know what to look for.'

'Nadine, maybe...Jesus!' He jerked his head to peer at a doorway. The darkness inside the house seemed fuller and more complete. 'Are there people here?' His mind jumped to an image of the masks that the natives wore to ward off tigers. He swallowed hard.

'Just us chickens, love.'

A stiff breeze rushed from the northwest and whipped the outlying gra.s.s. Early autumn leaves skated across the gla.s.sy rooftops and swirled in barren yards. Leaves fell dead and dry. Night was coming hard.

'I'm twitchy jet lag, probably. What do those weird-looking rigs do?' He pointed at the dish on the hill. 'Tos.h.i.+ said they're radio telescopes he invented.'

'He said he invented them? Oh my. I dearly love that man, but sometimes he's such an a.s.shole.'

'Yeah. How do they work?'

Nadine shrugged. 'They read frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum.'

'Radio signals from underground. Why does that sound totally backwards to me?'

'I didn't say anything about radio signals.'

'Then what did you say?'

'When we get back, ask Tos.h.i.+ about the node.'

'What are you talking about?' Partridge's attention was divided between her and the beautifully grotesque houses and the blackness inside them.

'You'll see. Get him to show you the node. That'll clear some of this stuff up, p.r.o.nto.'

Beasley called to them. He and the jeep were a merged silhouette against the failing sky. He swung his arm overhead until Nadine yelled that they would start back in a minute. She removed her shades and met Partridge's eyes. 'You okay, Rich?' She refused to relinquish her grip on his hand.

'You're asking me?'

She gave him another of her inscrutable looks. She reached up and pushed an unkempt lock from his forehead. 'I'm not mad, in case you're still wondering. I wanted you to see me off. Not like there're anymore weekend rendezvous in the stars for us.'

'That's no way to talk,' he said.

'Just sayin'.' She dropped his hand and walked away. In a moment he followed. By the time they made the summit, darkness had covered the valley. Beasley had to use the headlights to find the way home.

Gertz served prawns for dinner. They ate at the long mahogany table in the formal dining room. Jackson Phillips begged off due to an urgent matter in the city. Beasley packed him and one of the muscle bound bodyguards into the helicopter and flew away. That left six: Tos.h.i.+; Campbell; Nadine; Carrey Montague and the other bodyguard, and Partridge. The men wore suits and ties. Nadine wore a cream-colored silk chiffon evening gown. There were candles and elaborate floral arrangements and dusty bottles of wine from the Moorehead cellar and magnums of top dollar French champagne from a Boston importer who catered to those with exclusive tastes and affiliations. Tos.h.i.+ proposed a toast and said a few words in j.a.panese and then the a.s.sembly began to eat and drink.

Somewhere in the middle of the third or fourth course, Partridge realized he was cataclysmically drunk. They kept setting them up and he kept knocking them down. Tos.h.i.+ or Campbell frequently clapped his back and clinked his gla.s.s and shouted, 'Sic itur ad astra!' and another round would magically appear. His head was swollen and empty as an echo chamber. The winking silverware and slos.h.i.+ng winegla.s.ses, the bared teeth and hearty laughter came to him from a sea sh.e.l.l. He caught Nadine watching him from across the table, her eyes cool, her mouth set inscrutably. He poured more liquor down his throat to break their moment of recognition, and when he checked again she'd left the table, her untouched meal, and sailed from the room.

Dinner blurred into a collage of sense and chaos, of light and dark, and he gripped his gla.s.s and blinked dumbly against the shattering flare of the low slung chandelier and laughed uproariously. Without transition, dinner was concluded and the men had repaired to the den to relax over snifters of Hennessy. They lounged in wing-backed leather chairs and upon opulent leather divans. Partridge admired the vaulted ceiling, the library of towering lacquered oak bookcases and the impressive collection of antique British rifles and British cavalry sabers cached in rearing cabinets of chocolate wood and softly warped gla.s.s. Everything was so huge and s.h.i.+ny and far away. When the cigar and pipe smoke hung thick and the men's cheeks were glazed and rosy as the cheeks of Russian dolls, he managed, 'I'm supposed to ask you about the node.'

Campbell smiled a broad and genial smile. 'The node, yes. The node, of course, is the very reason Mr. Phillips and Mr. Montague have come to pay their respects. They hope to buy their way into Heaven.'

'He's right, he's right,' Mr. Carrey Montague said with an air of merry indulgence. 'Jack had his shot. Didn't he though. Couldn't hack it and off he flew.'

'I was getting to this,' Tos.h.i.+ said. 'In a roundabout fas.h.i.+on.'

'Exceedingly so,' Campbell said.

'Didn't want to frighten him. It's a delicate matter.'

'Yes,' Campbell said dryly. He puffed on his pipe and his eyes were red around the edges and in the center of his pupils.

'Shall I? Or do you want a go?' Tos.h.i.+ shrugged his indifference.

'The node is a communication device,' Campbell said through a mouthful of smoke. 'Crude, really. Danforth Moorehead, the Moorehead patriarch, developed the current model. Ahem, the schematic was delivered to him and he effected the necessary modifications, at any rate. Admittedly, it's superior to the primitive methods scrying, seances, psychedelic drugs, that nonsense. Not to mention some of the more gruesome customs we've observed in the provincial regions. Compared to that, the node is state of the art. It is a reservoir that filters and translates frequency imaging captured by our clever, clever radio telescopes. It permits us to exchange information with our...neighbors.'

Partridge dimly perceived that the others were watching him with something like fascination. Their eyes glittered through the haze. 'With who? I don't'

'Our neighbors,' Campbell said.

'Oh, the things they show you.' Carrey Montague sucked on his oxygen mask until he resembled a ghoul.

Partridge swung his head to look from face to face. The men were drunk. The men seethed with restrained glee. No one appeared to be joking. 'Well, go on then,' he said dreamily. His face was made of plaster. Black spots revolved before him like ashen snowflakes.

'I told you, Richard. Mankind can't go on like this.'

'Like what?'

Tos.h.i.+ chuckled. 'a.s.suming we don't obliterate ourselves, or that a meteorite doesn't smack us back to the Cambrian, if not the Cryptozoic, this planet will succ.u.mb to the exhaustion of Sol. First the mammals, then the reptiles, right down the line until all that's left of any complexity are the arthropods: beetles and c.o.c.kroaches and their oceanic cousins, practically speaking. Evolution is a circle we're sliding back to that endless sea of protoplasmic goop.'

'I'm betting on the nuclear holocaust,' Campbell said.

Partridge slopped more brandy into his mouth. He was far beyond tasting it. 'Mmm hmm,' he said intelligently and cast about for a place to inconspicuously ditch his gla.s.s.

'NASA and its holy grail First Contact, the quest for intelligent life in the universe...all hogwash, all lies.' Tos.h.i.+ gently took the snifter away and handed him a fresh drink in a ceramic mug. This was not brandy; it was rich and dark as honey in moonlight. 'Private stock, my boy. Drink up!' Partridge drank and his eyes flooded and he choked a little. Tos.h.i.+ nodded in satisfaction. 'We know now what we've always suspected. Man is completely and utterly alone in a sea of dust and smoke. Alone and inevitably slipping into extinction.'

'Not quite alone,' Campbell said. 'There are an estimated five to eight million species of insects as of yet unknown and uncla.s.sified. h.e.l.l of a lot of insects, hmm? But why stop at bugs? Only a d.a.m.ned fool would suppose that was anything but the tip of the iceberg. When the time of Man comes to an end their time will begin. And be certain this is not an invasion or a hostile occupation.

We'll be dead as Dodos a goodly period before they emerge to claim the surface. They won't rule forever. The planet will eventually become cold and inhospitable to any mortal organism. But trust that their rule will make the reign of the terrible lizards seem a flicker of an eyelash.'

'You're talking about c.o.c.kroaches,' Partridge said in triumph. 'f.u.c.king c.o.c.kroaches.' That was too amusing and so he snorted on his pungent liquor and had a coughing fit.

'No, we are not,' Campbell said.

'We aren't talking about spiders or beetles, either,' Tos.h.i.+ said. He gave Partridge's knee an earnest squeeze. 'To even compare them with the citizens of the Great Kingdom...I shudder. However, if I were to make that comparison, I'd say this intelligence is the Ur-progenitor of those insects scrabbling in the muck. The mother race of idiot stepchildren.'

Campbell knelt before him so they were eye to eye. The older man's face was radiant and distant as the moon. 'This is a momentous discovery. We've established contact. Not us, actually. It's been going on forever. We are the latest...emissaries, if you will. Trustees to the grandest secret of them all.'

'Hoo boy. You guys. You f.u.c.king guys. Is Nadine in on this?'

'Best that you see firsthand. Would you like that, Rich?'

'Uhmm-wha?' Partridge did not know what he wanted except that he wanted the carousel to stop.

Campbell and Tos.h.i.+ stood. They took his arms and the next thing he knew they were outside in the humid country night with darkness all around. He tried to walk, but his legs wouldn't cooperate much. They half dragged him to a dim metal door and there was a lamp bulb spinning in s.p.a.ce and then steep, winding concrete stairs and cracked concrete walls ribbed with mold. They went down and down and a strong, earthy smell overcame Partridge's senses. People spoke to him in rumbling nonsense phrases. Someone ruffled his hair and laughed. His vision fractured. He glimpsed hands and feet, a piece of jaw illumed by a quivering fluorescent glow. When the hands stopped supporting him, he slid to his knees. He had the impression of kneeling in a cellar. Water dripped and a pale overhead lamp hummed like a wasp in a jar. From the corner of his eye he got the sense of table legs and cables and he smelled an acrid smell like cleaning solvents. He thought it might be a laboratory.

Crawl forward just a bit.

It was strange whatever lay before him. Something curved, spiral-shaped and darkly wet. A horn, a giant conch sh.e.l.l, it was impossible to be certain. There was an opening, as the external os of a cervix, large enough to accommodate him in all his lanky height. Inside it was moist and m.u.f.fled and black.

There's a lad. Curl up inside. Don't fight. There, there. That's my boy. Won't be long. Not long. Don't be afraid. This is only a window, not a doorway.

Then nothing and nothing and nothing; only his heart, his breathing and a whispery static thrum that might've been the electromagnetic current tracing its circuit through his nerves.

Nothingness grew very dense.

Partridge tried to shriek when water, or something thicker than water flowed over his head and into his sinuses and throat. Low static built in his ears and the abject blackness was replaced by flashes of white imagery. He fell from an impossible height. He saw only high velocity jump-cuts of the world and each caromed from him and into the gulf almost instantly. Fire and blood and moving tides of unleashed water. Bones of men and women and cities. Dead, mummified cities gone so long without inhabitants they had become cold and brittle and smooth as mighty forests of stone. There loomed over everything a silence that held to its sterile bosom countless screams and the sibilant chafe of swirling dust. Nadine stood naked as ebony in the heart of a ruined square. She wore a white mask, but he knew her with the immediacy of a nightmare. She lifted her mask and looked at him. She smiled and raised her hand. Men and women emerged from the broken skysc.r.a.pers and collapsed bunkers. They were naked and pallid and smiling. In the distance the sun heaved up, slow and red. Its deathly light cascaded upon the lines and curves of cyclopean structures. These were colossal, inhuman edifices of fossil bone and obsidian and anthracite that glittered not unlike behemoth carapaces. He thrashed and fell and fell and drowned.

Nadine said in his ear, Come down. We love you.

The cellar floor was cool upon his cheek. He was paralyzed and choking. The men spoke to him in soothing voices. Someone pressed a damp cloth to his brow.

Take it easy, son. The first ride or two is a b.i.t.c.h and a half. Get his head.

Partridge groaned as gravity crushed him into the moldy concrete.

Someone murmured to him.

They are interested in preserving aspects of our culture. Thus Orren Towne and places, hidden places most white men will never tread. Of course, it's a multifaceted project. Preserving artifacts, buildings, that's hardly enough to satisfy such an advanced intellect...

Partridge tired to speak. His jaw worked spastically. No sound emerged. The concrete went soft and everyone fell silent at once.

Partridge stirred and sat up. He tried to piece together how he ended up on the back porch sprawled in a wooden folding chair. He was still in his suit and it was damp and clung to him the way clothes do after they have been slept in. The world teetered on the cusp of night. Parts of the sky were orange as fire and other parts were covered by purple-tinted rain clouds like a pall of cannon smoke. Partridge's hair stood in gummy spikes. His mouth was swollen and cottony. He had drooled in his long sleep. His body was stiff as an old plank.

Beasley came out of the house and handed him a gla.s.s of seltzer water. 'Can't hold your liquor anymore?'

Partridge took the gla.s.s in both hands and drank greedily. 'Oh, you're back. Must've been a h.e.l.l of a party,' he said at last. He had slept for at least sixteen hours according to his watch. His memory was a smooth and frictionless void.