Quartet for the End of Time (18 page)

Alden's own association with Biggs—even once he was finally able to meet him and make his own allegiances and ambitions known—had proved disappointing. After a while he began to suspect it was not just Biggs anymore: that, for some reason, he was being deliberately spurned by the party. How, he wondered, had
Biggs
managed to rise so quickly and easily in the party's esteem? So consis-tently
aloof did he appear, it seemed impossible to Alden that he might have been able to impress upon anyone the integrity of his intentions—especially at so young an age. But perhaps, he considered, he was looking at the thing the wrong way around. Perhaps it was precisely Biggs's aloofness that had so ingratiated him with the party. It made a certain sense. Wasn't it, after all, easier to trust—and come to rely upon—
dispassion
than its opposite (as vulnerable as passions were, to every shift and change)?

Settling on the idea, Alden began to cultivate for himself as indifferent a persona as he was able. He wore a hat a size too big—which he cocked, à la Biggs, over his left eye—and did his best to restrain his natural outspokenness (speaking instead with a sort of improvised drawl). It was a feat he could only manage when devoting to it his absolute, undivided attention. Inevitably, his mind would drift—an issue would be raised that would rile him—and, in a moment, his cool and deliberate manner would be altogether forgotten. The overall effect of his efforts was that he began to come off as even more hot-tempered and erratic than he had on any previous occasion. This unreliability—coupled with the inescapable fact of his lineage—certainly did not help to ingratiate him any further with Biggs, or the rest of the party; and so he remained—at least until May 1932—just as much an outsider as he'd been before.

I
T HAD BEEN
B
IGGS
, then, who approached
him
with a proposition that changed all that.

That very morning—Biggs said; it was the tenth of May, 1932—an important party member had arrived in Washington, whom Alden would, very shortly, have the privilege to know. He would be staying out on the flats with some of Waters's men. After they were acquainted, it was there that Alden should go to see him every day—arriving and departing (this was important, Biggs said, twisting the unlit cigar he perpetually chewed between his back teeth, and without in any way altering his tone) no later, on any given day, than three o'clock. If his new acquaintance did or said nothing, if he did not seek Alden out, or
even speak to him directly, Alden was simply to return the next day, before the agreed-upon time. Rest assured, Biggs said, one day—a date and time no one (least of all, Alden) could know in advance—his new acquaintance would transfer into his care a small explosive, which (Biggs could not help but betray, here, a note of respect) he had fashioned himself. The object was not at all dangerous unless tripped—but even so, Biggs said, Alden should take sufficient care. It would be easy enough to conceal, as it was only (here Biggs made a careless gesture, indicating an object no larger than a small box of cigars) of roughly such a size. Once he had done so, his job was simply to transport the object to the Capitol. To make his way, as quickly as he could, and without, of course, drawing to himself any undue attention, in the direction of his father's offices there.

Alden's heart, which had—all the time that Biggs had spoken— been hammering loudly in his chest, now began to beat even louder. His mind raced. He had certainly made it clear to Biggs that he was willing—that he was absolutely willing—but did Biggs actually expect—?

He was not (Biggs was saying) to go
so far
as to his father's office, but was to locate, instead, the small antechamber
adjacent
to the office. Did he know the one?

There was a small table there, Biggs said, wedged between two large stuffed chairs. It was here that Alden was to deposit the object. Another party member—already well established
inside—
would take all the necessary steps from there. (He needn't wonder
whom
, Biggs added quickly; Alden himself would have no dealings with the man.) Once he'd delivered the object, nothing more would be expected; Alden should simply leave the building as quickly and quietly as he'd come.

Alden's heart had, by this time, quieted in his chest. His thoughts, too, regained their more regular pace. So he would not be expected— But still— Biggs could hardly think—

He cleared his throat. What— he began. That is, may I ask. Again, he cleared his throat. It seems only right, he burst out, finally, that if I am
to
carry this object
I should, at least, know to what purpose and direction it's bound!

For the first time, now, since the conversation had begun, Biggs removed his cigar and—for a long, contemplative moment—examined its pulverized end.

You must understand, he replied at last. The importance of— utmost—secrecy in this matter. In order, of course, to protect the party—but also those, like yourself, who have already, at any level, gotten themselves (he peered at Alden from beneath his hat's low brim)
involved.

Alden looked away. Biggs shrugged. Then continued, leaning ever so slightly in Alden's direction; his voice soft, little more than a whisper. If you trust, he said, as I do, that the party has both your, and this country's, best interests at heart—and that therefore everything you do to serve the party serves this ultimate end—

He drew back suddenly. Coughed. Then returned his cigar between his teeth.

That—he concluded—should be enough.

—

I
T TOOK SEVERAL MINUTES
,
ONCE
A
LDEN WAS ON HIS WAY
—
FOLLOW
-ing Arthur in the direction of the Mall—before he could relax again, and begin to appreciate, in the way that he'd hoped that he would, the weight of the object he carried: its great, explosive potential at his side. The problem was easily overcome, of course. He would simply announce to both Arthur and Douglas that he was needed back home, make as if to depart, and then (when he was quite sure he was unseen) double back toward the Mall. With this decided, he allowed his mind to drift, more pleasantly, in other directions. He saw himself at some indeterminate point in the future explaining to an admiring crowd his own (admittedly small, he would modestly protest) part in bringing the whole thing off. But, enough of that, he chastised himself—as he often did when his imagination ran away with him. If he imagined
something like that, in exactly the way he wished it might occur, well—it was quite obvious that it would not. If, however, he managed to leave his projections of the future—his hopes and ambitions, his greatest desires—to the best of his ability
unthought
, there remained a greater degree of chance that the arrangement of events as they actually came to pass would take the shape and particularities of those as yet unarticulated desires. It worked the other way as well. If something terrible crossed his mind (as just at that moment, walking beside Douglas and Arthur, it did: How could, he wondered, the explosive power he had recently been charged with possibly be contained within the precise and limited dimensions of the device he carried? How could any who regarded him not instantly recognize what he himself recognized so well? It was the
future itself
he bore upon his person now, exposing it—and himself—at every moment to the inherent risk that it be wrested from him—and before it was time!) another thought would occur to him, and that was that, since the latter thought had been thought at all, it would not now,
could
not (by some law of reason, the details of which he could not be aware) come to pass. The complicating fact that he had
also
thought this second thought—that the first could not come to pass—did not trouble him overmuch; at least he was guaranteed that it should not.

So distracted by these thoughts was he that Alden hardly noticed when the crowd around him, which had until then been largely moving with them, thickened; then began—so slowly that at first it seemed accidental—to move in the opposite direction. To push back upon itself, pressure building, until there was just: a sudden swell of bodies. Moving as one, and according to a will and direction all its own.

Alden moved with it. There was no time to consider why, or in what direction; to wonder what was happening, or how it had begun. There was no way of measuring distances, in either space or time, and because of it—of those moments, as he was pushed along; through and under; as the crowd surged around him like a wave—he remembered hardly anything at all.

Nothing, that is, until the hit. Until a sound like hard gravel being
ground underfoot caused him to turn; to realize that the sound had been a brick, just then connecting squarely with the skull of Douglas Sinclair.

In response, Douglas had lurched forward, uttered a startled cry, which, even above the noise of the crowd, Arthur (already several paces farther on) heard.

He turned. Saw his son's forehead glistening with blood, and—a look crossed his face. Then his fist went soaring through the air, and (as though it had known in advance, even before the brick had been thrown, where it would land) connected with the jaw of a soldier from the 12th Infantry Regiment, just then advancing with the rest of MacArthur's men.

There was nothing then—no memory at all—until he found himself sitting beside Douglas and Arthur on the hard, ridged police van floor, Douglas's forehead gushing with blood. Arthur with his hand pressed to the scalp of his son, his voice a low, repetitive moan, which seemed, even as the words were spoken—
My boy
, he said;
my boy, my boy
—already lost.

There was: Being ordered to stand. Being searched. The bag he still carried slung over his shoulder wrenched from him. Opened. There was his own horror as the hand of an officer lifted the small box entrusted to him less than an hour before; himself being shoved, brutally, from behind, so that in another moment he was sent sprawling to the floor, choking for some reason, the air emptied from his lungs.

There was a sudden flood of relief. Not only at the return of breath to his lungs, but at having been relieved of the object—in whatever way. It hardly mattered to him now. He sat, choking and spluttering, even weeping a little with the pure relief he felt at having whatever it was that had been begun—whatever it was that he had, in a capacity he could not name, found himself part—was now, however ingloriously, at an end.

There was the dark underground cell; his back pressed to the wall, in order to cool the bruise that was quickly forming there. There was: The door being opened. Once again, being ordered to stand. There was Arthur, ordered forward. Arthur hesitating. Unwilling, or unable, to remove his hand from the forehead of his son, though the bleeding had
stopped now. Had dried in a thick crust (more black than red) in the boy's hair.

There was: Arthur, again, ordered forward. Arthur, complying this time. Then two men, talking in low voices; seeming to agree. A tattered hat placed, for some reason, on Arthur's head. Arthur's hand flying up—defensively—in order to remove it. Two men holding it fast.

I
T WAS NOT UNTIL
much later—a week or so after his return—that Alden came to know anything more about the hat Arthur had worn that afternoon, or any of the other circumstances surrounding his release. When, once more, the cell door clanged and he was informed that he alone was free to go, he simply rose and—nodding once, grimly, in Douglas's, then Arthur's direction—followed the officer to the open door. It is possible that—having accepted, without question, the exceptional quality of his fate—he did not think of it again. That he did not pause, even for a moment, to consider under what exceptional circumstances he might have been allowed (without once being questioned regarding either the origin or direction of the lethal object wrested from him the day before) to be so simply returned to his parents' home— bruised and embarrassed, but otherwise unscathed.

He was sullen and, especially at first, did his best to avoid all but the most necessary contact—even with Sutton. He felt personally affronted whenever she, or his parents, or even Germaine, interrupted his painful musings on what had, or had not, so recently occurred. But this did not happen often, as they, too, were wary and left him, for the most part, alone. And as the days passed, and the dark bruise on his back began slowly to heal, he found it became easier for his mind to drift away from the past. Before long—though from time to time the riots, the Indian, Arthur and Douglas, Biggs in the distance, would swim again into view—it became nearly reflexive for Alden to push them, whenever they surfaced, quite altogether from his mind. What was done was done, he counseled himself; it was hardly worthwhile to dwell on the thing. And besides: it was absurd, and even somewhat vain, to suppose (with the way things had gone in the end) that any action on
his
part might have
had even the slightest effect on the event as a whole. In fact, it was probably for the best he had been intercepted when he was, the object confiscated, and no greater harm done. At times he even indulged in a certain feeling of smug superiority. If he had only been entrusted, he thought to himself, weeks, days, even hours before, the whole thing might have gone off differently. From the safety of the present, it was easy to imagine himself in the past far braver and more willing than he really had been, or was. Despite this—and whatever he might be able, quite reasonably, to say in his defense—he did not fool himself into thinking that either Biggs or the Indian would be quick to ask for his help again. Perhaps there was some relief in that, too. It would be best for all involved, he decided emphatically, to avoid them—and anyone else connected with the party—for some time.

—

I
N THE EVENINGS
,
HE WAS PRESSED INTO HIS MOTHER
'
S SERVICE IN
the assembly of a large, seemingly unsolvable jigsaw puzzle, which she had spread out on a low table in her private room at the back of the house. Very slowly, as the days and then the weeks began to pass, an English country garden gradually emerged into view. A white trellis, laden with red and yellow flowers. Shutters, a cobbled path, the fine spray of a weeping willow at the bottom-left-hand edge of the frame. Though Alden had protested at first (Sutton, without hesitation, had flatly refused), he was, in truth, grateful for his mother's silent company come evening. For the mild frustration, a sort of rigorous boredom, that overcame him in those quiet evening hours when confronted by the scattered pieces of that unsolvable puzzle, and its small satisfactions, as— piece by piece—they brought it closer to its end.