Velocity. Part 42

These containers would not move whatsoever when the motor home was in motion. They wouldn't make one clink.

Each jar was lighted by fiber-optic filaments under it, so the contents glowed against the backdrop of black silk. As the lamplight in the living room now dimmed to enhance the effect of the display, Billy thought of aquariums.

Each of these small gla.s.s worlds contained not fish but a memory of murder. In a preservative fluid floated faces and hands.

Every face was ghostly, each like a pale mantis perpetually swimming, the features of one hardly distinguishable from those of the others.

The hands were different from one another, said more about each victim than did the faces, and were less grisly than he would have a.s.sumed, ethereal and strange.

"Aren't they beautiful?" Valis said, and sounded somewhat like HAL 9000 in 2001: A s.p.a.ce Odyssey.

"They're sad," Billy said.

"What an odd word to choose," Valis said. "They delight me."

"They fill me with despair."

"Despair," Valis said, "is good. Despair can be the nadir of one life and the starting point of an ascent into another, better one."

Billy didn't turn away from the collection in fear or revulsion. He a.s.sumed that he was being watched by closed-circuit cameras. His reaction seemed to be important to Valis.

Besides, as despair-inspiring as this display might be, it had a hideous elegance, and exerted a certain fascination.

The collector had not been so coa.r.s.e as to include genitalia or b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Billy suspected that Valis did not kill for any kind of s.e.xual gratification, did not rape his female victims, perhaps because to do so would be to acknowledge at least that single aspect of shared humanity. He seemed to want to think of himself as a creature apart.

Neither did the artist deform his collection with the gaudy and grotesque. No eyeb.a.l.l.s, no internal organs.

Faces and hands, faces and hands.

Staring at the illuminated jars, Billy thought of mimes dressed all in black with white-powdered faces and white-gloved hands.

Although perverse, here was an aesthetic mind at work.

"A sense of balance," Billy said, describing the vivid display, "a harmony of line, a sensitivity to form. Perhaps most important, a restraint that is chaste but not fastidious."

Valis said nothing.

Curiously, by standing face to face with Death and not letting fear control, Billy was at last no longer evading life to any degree, but embracing it.

"I have read your book of short stories," Valis said.

"In critiquing your work," Billy told him, "I wasn't inviting criticism of my own."

A short surprised laugh escaped Valis, a warm laugh as the speakers translated it. "Actually, I found your fiction to be fascinating, and strong."

Billy did not reply.

"They are the stories of a seeker," Valis said. "You know the truth of life, but you circle around that fruit, circle and circle, reluctant to admit it, to taste it."

Turning from the collection, Billy moved to the nearest Meiji bronzes, a pair of fish, sinuous, simply but exquisitely detailed, the bronze meticulously finished to mimic the tone and texture of rusted iron.

"Power," Billy said. "Power is part of the truth of life."

Behind the locked door, Valis waited.

"And emptiness," Billy said. "The void. The abyss."

He moved to another bronze: a robed scholar and a deer sitting side by side, the scholar bearded and smiling, his robe embroidered with gold inlay.

"The choice," Billy said, "is chaos or control. With power, we can create. With power and chaste intent, we create art. And art is the only answer to chaos and the void."

After a silence, Valis said, "Only one thing holds you to the past. I can release you from it."

"By one more murder?" Billy asked.

"No. She can live, and you can move on to a new life... when you know."

"And what is it you know that I don't?"

"Barbara," Valis said, "lives in d.i.c.kens."

Billy heard a sharp intake of breath, his own, an expression of surprise and recognition.

"While in your house, Billy, I reviewed the pocket notebooks you've filled with things she said in coma."

"Have you?"

"Certain phrases, certain constructions resonated with me. On your living-room shelves, the complete set of d.i.c.kens-that belonged to her."

"Yes."

"She had a pa.s.sion for d.i.c.kens."

"She'd read all the novels, several times each."

"But not you."

"Two or three," Billy said. "d.i.c.kens never clicked with me."

"Too full of life, I suspect," Valis said. "Too full of faith and exuberance for you."

"Perhaps."

"She knows those stories so well, she's living them in dreams. The words she speaks in coma come sequentially in certain chapters."

"Mrs. Joe," Billy said, recalling his most recent visit to Barbara. "I've read that one. Joe Gargery's wife, Pip's sister, the bullying shrew. Pip calls her 'Mrs. Joe.'"

"Great Expectations," Valis confirmed. "Barbara lives all the books, but more often the lighter adventures, seldom the horrors of A Tale of Two Cities."

"I didn't realize..."

"She's more likely to dream A Christmas Carol than the bloodiest moments of the French Revolution," Valis a.s.sured him.

"I didn't realize, but you did."

"In any case, she knows no fear or pain because each adventure is a well-known road, a pleasure and a comfort."

Billy moved through the living room, to another bronze, then past it.

"She needs nothing you can give her," Valis said, "and nothing more than what she has. She lives in d.i.c.kens, and she knows no fear."

Intuiting what was wanted to bring the artist forth, Billy put down the revolver on an antique s.h.i.+nto altar table to the left of the bedroom door. Then he retraced his steps to the middle of the living room and sat in an armchair.

Chapter 71.

Handsomer than the self-portrait in pencil that could be viewed on his Web site, Valis entered.

Smiling, he picked up the revolver from the altar table and examined it.

Beside the armchair in which Billy sat, on a small table, stood another j.a.panese bronze from the Meiji period: a plump smiling dog held a turtle on a leash.

Valis approached with the handgun. Not unlike Ivy Elgin, he walked with a dancer's grace and as if gravity were not quite able to force the soles of his shoes flat to the floor.

His thick, soot-black hair, dusted with ashes at the temples. His smile so engaging. His gray eyes luminous, pellucid, and direct.

He had the presence of a movie star. The self-a.s.surance of a king. The serenity of a monk.

Standing in front of the armchair, he aimed the revolver at Billy's face. "This is the gun."

"Yes," Billy said.

"You shot your father with it."

"Yes."

"How did that feel?"

Staring into the muzzle, Billy said, "Terrifying."

"And your mother, Billy?"

"Right."

"It felt right to shoot her?"

"At the time, in the instant," Billy said.

"And later?"

"I wasn't sure."

"Wrong is right. Right is wrong. It's all perspective, Billy."

Billy said nothing. In order to arrive at what you are not, you must go through the way in which you are not.

Peering at him along the barrel of the gun, Valis said, "Who do you hate, Billy?"

"I don't think anyone."

"That's good. That's healthy. Hate and love exhaust the mind, inhibit clear thinking."

"I like these bronzes very much," Billy said.

"Aren't they wonderful? You can enjoy the form, the texture, the immense skill of the artist, and yet not care a d.a.m.n thing about the philosophy behind them."

"Especially the fish," Billy said.

"Why the fish in particular?"

"The illusion of movement. The appearance of speed. They look so free."

"You've led a slow life, Billy. Maybe you're ready for some movement. Are you ready for speed?"

"I don't know."

"I suspect you do."

"I'm ready for something."

"You came here intending violence," Valis said.

Billy raised his hands from the arms of the chair and stared at the latex gloves. He stripped them off.

"Does this feel strange to you, Billy?"

"Totally."

"Can you imagine what might happen next?"