Nest of Worlds (13 page)

It was early when the phone started clattering. Gavein picked it up: Medved again.

“I’m calling on behalf of the Division of Science.”

“My congratulations on your new position.”

“Thanks. I owe it to you. The Division requests that you come in for testing. This matter has grown in importance. As a phenomenon you have come to the attention of the highest people.”

“The testing, how long will it take? You understand, my wife is ill. I need to care for her.”

“The DS will be quick. They should be done with you in a few days, a week at most.”

“And my taking off from work? My expenses?”

“The DS is a government agency. It will see to everything.”

“I guess I have no choice then.”

Ra Mahleiné asked, “Where are you going?”

He covered the receiver with his hand. “He says it’s for testing at the Division of Science.” Then, into the phone, “More are dying, Medved?”

“I’d put it this way: the dying continues. The number is still in the three digits.”

“Where do I report? What’s the address?”

“We’ll come for you. That will be safer.”

“When?”

“In an hour.”

Things were moving too quickly. Gavein didn’t feel prepared, but he didn’t refuse.

Both Lorraine and Anabel promised they would tend to Ra Mahleiné in Gavein’s absence.

They hope to stand under the umbrella of safety around David Death, he thought. The instinct of self-preservation at work.

Ra Mahleiné wiped her glasses over and over. In Davabel they put too much salt on the street, she complained, and it clouded her lenses. The reasoning she used was long and involved. When snow fell, the city authorities instantly (and maliciously) sprinkled salt. The result was slush, which passing cars in turn sprayed on her glasses, and the salt in that slush etched and pitted the glass. She spent an inordinate amount of time removing every trace of salt. Ra Mahleiné had grown even thinner. She vanished among the pillows of the sofa. It seemed that the little energy she had left was devoted to the obsessive cleaning of her lenses.

She lifted her eyes to Anabel. Without glasses they seemed larger than usual. “Very well, Anabel, I’ll take you, but you must be obedient,” she said, stressing
obedient
. “You’ll be under my protection, until such time as . . .” She hesitated. “You must listen . . . Any insubordination, and it’s the end for you. An end that will be as miserable as you are.”

Gavein wondered. Ra Mahleiné loathed the woman yet was choosing her. To pay back old pain, he thought, old humiliation.

“I remember how you kicked me, as a parting gift. And where you kicked, where you loved to kick.”

Gavein clenched his fists. He had not known this.

“Don’t worry, Lorraine,” Ra Mahleiné went on. “I won’t punish you as I do her. You’ll go on walks with me. I’m still weak, but it will be spring soon. The snow will melt. I intend to do a lot of walking, and you’ll help me.”

“But . . . I have a job.”

“Don’t you wish to live? To live, you must be near Gavein, at least near me, isn’t that so?”

Even she believes it, he thought. She accepts the role of Death’s wife.

“Mrs. Throzz is right,” Lorraine’s mother hastened to say. “That’s definitely the best arrangement. Until the business of all these deaths is made clear, you’ll take a vacation, dear. How can your employers refuse? The most important thing is a person’s safety.”

With the squeal of tires and the mewl of dying sirens, the column of vehicles came to a halt. At the head of the column were two infantry carriers of the National Guard, armored and fitted with machine guns, small-caliber cannons, and missile launchers. All the vehicles were painted in green-gray camouflage and adorned with the small white, black, and red emblems of Davabel. After the carriers came a white hospital minibus, two civilian cars, an army truck, and another armored vehicle.

A serious business, thought Gavein, if they arrive with such an entourage.

Several civilians stepped from the cars. They entered the front room. Two armed soldiers stationed themselves at the door.

Medved nodded in greeting. “This is Senator Boggs,” he said, introducing a tall, graying man. “And this is Dr. Siskin, from the Division of Science.” Dr. Siskin was small and slight, a gray.

“And Puttkamel?” asked Gavein. “He should be in this illustrious company.”

“Don’t joke, Dave. Or don’t you know? The arsonists who survived seized Puttkamel and lynched him.” Medved gestured toward a massive man whose bald spot was exactly the size of the military cap that ordinarily sat on his head. “This is General Thompson.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Thompson. “You don’t seem a monster. Any one of my sergeants looks more imposing.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, sir. I’d be happy to exchange places with any one of them.”

“Medved informed you of everything by telephone, yes? Let’s be off,” said Thompson.

“I have a phone call to make, then we can go.”

“I’m afraid there isn’t time.”

The soldiers standing by the door both took a step forward.

“I’m a prisoner?” Gavein asked, turning to Medved. “This you didn’t tell me.”

“Make your call,” said Senator Boggs. “Of course you are not a prisoner. We are simply in a great hurry, since this matter is so grave.”

Gavein nodded and picked up the phone. He told Dr. Nott that he was leaving to be tested.

“I will be in contact with your wife,” the doctor assured him. “She is weak now but will regain her strength before the operation. Do not worry.”

Gavein hung up. “I am free now. May my wife accompany me?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, no,” said Siskin. “The testing facility is off-limits. A military installation, you understand.”

Gavein had expected this answer, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

“I’ll be gone for how long?” he asked.

“Six, seven days,” said Boggs. “I give you my personal word it will not be longer.”

“Then let’s go. And may the seven days pass as quickly as possible.”

Gavein started for one of the cars, but it turned out that he had been assigned a place in the ambulance. Inside were two men wearing helmets and airtight plastic suits. They wanted him to lie on the stretcher, but he preferred to sit. That way he could look out the window as the ambulance drove, its siren on. The two medics began to take readings. As if performing a rite of magic, they ran a sensor over his body.

“Radiation normal. No higher than background.”

The other confirmed it.

On the empty streets Gavein saw burned cars, broken windows, litter. The convoy passed a military cordon.

“It would be better if you lay down now,” said one of the scientist-medics. “There could be rocks thrown.”

In the distance was a mob.

“Why are they doing that?” Gavein asked, taking his place on the thick foam rubber.

“The infection spreads. People want to fight the germ. Even people you saw only on television, glimpsed accidentally out of the corner of your eye, are now dying. If it’s not known whose fate is sealed, then naturally everyone wants to remove the cause.”

“And you two, why do you wear masks?”

“We’re volunteers. They tell us to put on masks, so we put on masks, but it makes no difference, does it?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

A couple of stones thumped against the side of the ambulance. The convoy accelerated. More sirens went on. A couple of tear-gas canisters were fired at the crowd.

“At least they’re not shooting,” said one of the medics.

“Not shooting yet, Yull. Who knows when they’ll start?”

“They will be prosecuted if they use weapons. That will make them think first.”

“For now.”

The crowd dispersed, and then there was hardly anybody out. The convoy sped down streets that seemed normal.

“Mr. Death,” said Yull, nudging Gavein with an elbow. “You can sit up now. We’re out of it.”

Gavein looked around. Once in a while they passed rows of the curious standing along police barriers. No one threw anything at the convoy. Some turned their backs at the last moment or hid their faces.

They pay me tribute, thought Gavein, as if I were a head of state. Which is no surprise. How else does one welcome Death?

“The madness was only in Central Davabel,” said the other scientist, Omar. “A lot of people settled private scores behind the pretext of dealing with David Death.”

“How is the country managing?” Gavein asked.

“A depopulated Central Davabel is now surrounded by a cordon of soldiers. It’s a tight line, but here and there desperate people break through. Soldiers too have lost members of their families. Sometimes they look the other way. Hence that band of attackers.”

“What do the attackers want?” Gavein asked, thinking of his wife.

“To kill you,” Yull answered simply. “In my opinion, it’s not possible. One proof of which was that crack-up on the street in front of your house. The cordon is really to protect people from their own stupidity.”

“I’m concerned about my wife. Let it be broadcast, now, on television, that I’m being taken to the Division of Science.”

“Okay. I’ll see to that.”

“What’s on the other side of the cordon?”

“We are. Normal life continues, to a degree. Normal, if not for these deaths. Each one accidental, explainable, and invariably in accordance with the Significant Name of the victim. But invariably, also, with your assistance . . .”

“If the deaths are accidental and explainable, then why this panic?”

“Because so many are dying. Quite aside from the connecting factor, this is an epidemic.”

“An epidemic?”

“Absolutely. There are so many more deaths than before the correlation—that’s you—was introduced. A difference of maybe twenty percent.”

The convoy rushed on, its sirens off now, only the colored lights flashing.

“What are you measuring with that sensor?”

“Radiation from you. It’s background level. That is, not a factor. We’ll find something eventually, I think. Everything has a cause.”

“The cause may not be logical,” said Omar. “It may be pure coincidence. Though the chance of that is infinitesimally small. And yet an event, no matter how improbable, must take place eventually if one waits long enough.”

“I don’t believe in miracles of probability,” said Yull dismissively.

The ride, at full speed, went on for hours. They tore through streets that the police had closed off to traffic.

Later, there were no lines of spectators. An occasional pedestrian looked with indifference at the vehicles rushing past. Life went on as usual here. No one connected the convoy with the news on television.

Suddenly they had left all the buildings behind—unheard of in Davabel, where urban sprawl covered the continent, except for the airports. Ayrrah was similarly populated. Empty stretches could be found in Lavath, to the north—eternal ice covered the land there—and also in the southern reaches of Llanaig, where the intense sun had turned the land into desert.

The empty stretch here was the result of the leveling of houses. Bulldozers had gone at them wholesale.

In the distance rose the mighty complex of the Division of Science.

They stopped at a barbed-wire checkpoint. Soldiers peered curiously into the ambulance.

Why are the idiots staring? thought Gavein. If I really am Death, they’re dead.”

Passing the checkpoint, the convoy made for the buildings.

“All this demolition, it’s in my honor?”

“That too,” muttered Yull. “A lot of effort has gone into this. The DS was given a bundle of money.”

“Who’s in charge?”

“Boggs is the head, but Siskin’s running things, since the plan is his.”

“Plan?”

“There were several proposed. His was chosen. But others are being kept in reserve, in case his fails.”

“This is all very flattering.”

Omar asked Gavein to get into a plastic suit similar to theirs. He was supposed to inhale through a filter, exhale into a tank. The thin material didn’t hinder conversation. After the cars pulled up to the institute, the ambulance interior was sprayed with a strong disinfectant.

“What’s this for?”

“Siskin’s plan tries to leave nothing out. We’re fairly sure there’s no bacillus involved, but why take a chance?”

The sterilization didn’t take long. The ambulance door was opened by people in similar suits, and Gavein was escorted through a membrane tunnel to the building.

He was taken to a specially equipped section of the institute’s hospital for infectious diseases. Everyone he met was covered with plastic. He was asked not to remove his suit until the results of the bacteriological tests were in. Even the toilet was designed hermetically: the suit attached to the seat, and his behind was automatically washed with a stream of water, then dried with a stream of hot air. The unit packaged the excrement as if it were a treasure. The same with his urine and spit. Gavein did not meet the brains of the project, did not even see them on a screen. The specific tests were conducted by biologist Yull Saalstein and physicist Omar Ezzir.

Their superior was a physician who obviously wanted to keep his existence a secret. Gavein was amused by the chain of command and by the cowardice behind it. All he would have to do, after all, was direct his attention to the unseen doctor.

Medved’s people had set up a clearinghouse of information on the deaths. They were looking for chains of causality between the victims and Gavein. No detail was too small to be entered into the database. The most insignificant fact, like a thread of a spiderweb, could lead to the perpetrator who sat unwitting at the center. The researchers were less interested in the cause of death than in how the death fit the victim’s Significant Name. The rest was a police matter.

The questions put to Gavein dealt with minutiae, since the basic facts had been known for some time. He repeated things that he had repeated several times already. This exhaustive interrogating made no sense to him: if you analyzed carefully enough what any citizen did, you were bound to find some link between him and the fate of any other citizen.

But the invisible leaders had faith in Medved and his statisticians. Deaths were being classified by their degree of connectedness to Gavein. The death count, broken up into these categories, was displayed daily on the DS monitors. Each time, Gavein looked for a death unrelated to him, but the number in that column—labeled
Apparent Lack of Connection with GT
—was always zero.

He was not allowed to use the telephone, but they promised him that every day someone would call Ra Mahleiné and speak with her. He could listen to her voice recorded on tape.

“Dr. Nott sends me pills regularly. I’m stronger after taking them and have stopped sleeping during the day,” said Ra Mahleiné in one recording. “They’ve provided me with a wheelchair. Lorraine pushes me along the streets around the house. Laila is not doing as well. Fatima asked if her daughter could push my wheelchair sometimes. Wilcox has hanged himself, and since then Brenda does nothing but drink. I never see her sober. The buildings around us are all abandoned, the stores boarded up. Our necessities, even the alcohol for Brenda, but whatever we ask for, are brought by police van.”

There was a rattling sound in the receiver.

“We don’t pay for a thing. It’s like having unlimited credit with the government bank. This is not good, not normal.” She paused, then continued. “Zef started reading
Nest of Worlds
. He says he’s undergoing mind thaw, because there are no lectures now to deplete his gray matter, so he’s taken up the book and the matter of Wilcox. He also says he needs to choose a topic for his thesis. Edda wanted to throw the book out, but Zef told her that since his Name is
Murhred
, it’s not the book that threatens him but other people. Also, he told her that he read in the introduction that the book would finish off only Wilcox. I don’t know if that convinced her, but for the time being she has stopped talking about chucking books into the fire. Zef is reading a lot, taking notes, many notes, because this will be his thesis. You wouldn’t believe how he’s changed. He cut off his Mohawk. He wears gray. He can pester me with questions for an hour, for example asking if his clothes have achieved the Lavath standard for dullness. His enthusiasm gives him energy, not at all the way it was with Wilcox. The book destroyed Harry, you could see day by day how he was falling apart, how the end was coming.”

Two days later, Ra Mahleiné said:

“Brenda slit her wrists while drunk and got into the tub. Fortunately old Mrs. Hougassian saved her. She used to be a nurse. Brenda’s hands are bandaged up now, though one finger won’t move. She and Harry must have loved each other more than they let people see. I prefer Lorraine to push me on my outings; she’s stronger. Laila can’t manage when one of the wheels gets stuck in a pothole. You can see she’s pregnant now. Maybe that’s the reason she’s weaker. In the house she walks around in nothing but her bandages and panties. She says she’s hot. I think it’s indecent, because she’s healed a lot and doesn’t have that many bandages now, so practically everything shows. Her skin is like parchment and pinker even than before. Her panties are full of holes. Zef may have screwed her once, but now all he cares about is the book. The only man in the house is old Mass, and he doesn’t get out of bed, after his attack of sciatica.

“I smacked Anabel in the mouth and pulled her hair, because the toilet was dirty. Not only that, but she also spilled coffee on the bed. You wouldn’t believe how humble she was, offering her face so I could hit it. Afraid to die, she puts up with everything, never resists. It becomes meaningless, this paying her back. Later I felt stupid. I don’t make a good torturer. I’ve decided to leave her alone unless she gets arrogant again.”