2
The sky was slate-gray and low, with a hint of snow in the air. What had already fallen lay more than a foot deep, and Telford made his way through it along the tracks of the few cars that had passed. The only supermarket left in town was a half-mile from Sarah’s place, and he’d had to walk it.
Ahead the towers of Essex glowed, the flashing signs—Prudential, Sony, Transorbit, Eurex—making the day seem darker than it was. Beyond them was the spire of the Empire State, unlit these five years.
The grocery bag was getting away from him. Canned stuff, unbalanced and ready to topple. He clutched it against his chest and juggled it until the cans settled. The bag was made of the new ecoplastic, slippery in spite of the buff finish. He thought of the jokes about the bags degrading in people’s hands. If it was ever going to happen, it would be right now, to him.
He resumed walking, went past a small white house abandoned and falling to ruin. It had once been a doctor’s office—standard practice in the 20th, remaking homes into offices—and the sign remained, dangling on a piece of wire: sanji patel, li-licensed optometrist. Telford wondered where Sanji was now.
Across the street stood Newman Hall, a small Catholic college gone bust and converted into cheap apartments. Almost empty now, although it had been packed with evacuees from Manhattan not long ago. Climbing the knoll at the corner, he paused to look around. Nothing out of the ordinary, no sign that anything had changed in the half hour he’d been gone. He had no reason to believe that the Cossacks knew who or where he was, but that didn’t excuse sloppiness. You had one mistake coming, if you were lucky. Telford had already made his.
He waded on. The checkpoint straddling the border of South Orange and Essex blinked at him. Unmanned, comp-driven, programmed to report anyone who crossed without a city ID. Essex, Inc., wasn’t fond of people wandering in unannounced from the suburban slums.
At the door he punched the entry code, balancing the bag on one knee. A buzzer sounded as it swung open.
Inside he stopped to listen, then went on up. An old dorm, hallways bare and cold though the apartments were actually pretty nice. When he opened the door, an image arose: the sick horror that had greeted him in New Orleans. He shut his eyes and went in. There was no sign of Sarah; she was probably still asleep.
He set down the bag and rubbed his hands. They were aching with cold, and they’d be chapped tomorrow. Better pick up a new pair of gloves; winter wasn’t over yet by a long shot. His last pair had vanished, left behind in that hotel room in Louisiana, most likely.
He put the food away and cleaned up the foul mess in the kitchen. Old food, half-empty cans, a patch of stickiness, what he guessed was spilled liquor, covering a quarter of the floor.
Finishing up, he opened the cabinet under the sink and winced when he saw the urn where he’d put it last night. He looked over his shoulder, half-expecting to see Sarah gazing back at him, but the room was empty.
Reaching in, he pushed the urn all the way to the back, arranging the cans to hide it. He didn’t want her to know about that. Not now, probably not ever. He’d sneak it out later, bury it somewhere, a spot fit for poor Briggs’s ashes to rest.
Telford wasn’t all that hungry, but he decided to eat anyway. A can of chili, a couple of rolls. He put it away quickly, without really tasting anything.
Sarah came out as he was washing the bowl, so quietly, he didn’t hear her until she reached the kitchen.
He turned to see her standing in the doorway, wearing the nightgown he’d put on her last night, with a blue robe over it. She looked better today, but that didn’t mean much. Her face was ashen, her eyes bloodshot, her hair a knotted nest dangling to her shoulders.
And yet the beauty was still there—a hint of it, anyway. If she’d only cool down, cut out the booze, take care of herself, it would come back. Not the way it had been, perhaps, not fresh and new as when he’d first met her, but something worthy. If she’d only get a handle on things . . .
But there was no getting a handle on what was wrong with Sarah.
She gave him a ghost of a smile. “Good morning.”
“How you feeling?”
Crossing her arms, she leaned against the doorjamb. “My head hurts.”
He started toward the bathroom. “I’ll get you . . .”
She grabbed his arm, just a touch before dropping her hand. “No, it’s all right. I just took something.”
He looked down at her face, then backed off, remembering that she didn’t like anyone that close. She plucked at the front of her gown, her face stiff.
“I’ll get you some dinner,” he said, turning back to the kitchen.
“I’m not very hungry.”
“Come on, Sarah. You’ve got to eat. I’ll make some soup. How’s that?”
Her only answer was a shrug. She watched as he opened a can. Then she went into the living room.
While the soup cooked, he made a jug of orange juice. Sarah had always liked OJ. He carried a bowl and glass out, and she smiled at him, sorry to be such trouble, not wanting to admit that nothing he did for her could ever be called that.
As she ate, he went through a copy of the Times he’d picked up, reading aloud anything odd or silly enough to amuse her. There was plenty of that.
She finished and lay back on the couch. “They still call it the New York Times,” she said.
“Yeah, well—Hackensack Times doesn’t have quite the same cachet.”
She laughed. A quiet laugh, but real just the same. “Why didn’t they just move to Brooklyn?”
“Got me.” Telford pointed to her glass. “More juice?”
“I’ll get it . . .”
“No, you sit right there.” He left the glass and brought her the pitcher.
“How long can you stay this time?” she asked as he poured.
“Long as I like, babe.”
“Nobody calling for help out there?”
He felt a twinge, thinking of the ashes only twenty feet away. “Nope. Pretty quiet all around.”
“You need somebody to help you, Jase. It’s too hard for just you alone.”
“There isn’t anybody else.”
Sarah went on, her voice small. “I’d like to help.”
He held back his answer, not wanting to hurt her, afraid he’d say something that would tell her just how empty that hope was. Finally he spoke. “You do help me, Sarah.”
The glass turned slowly in her hand. “If I could pull things together here . . .” Her eyes met his, and she smiled, a bleak smile, full of sadness. She knew.
“You’ll do it,” he said, winking at her. “You ain’t whipped yet, kiddo.”
She put her glass down and yawned, raising her hand to her lips.
“Still a little beat?”
“I feel like I haven’t slept at all.”
“You need more rest. Go on and crash out. Tell you what,” he added as she got up. “When you’re back on your feet, we’ll go downtown. See a show, have a good meal. How’s that sound?”
“That’d be nice.”
“Yeah. We could both use a good time.”
“That’s for sure,” she said, and padded to the bedroom. At the door she stopped. “And Jason . . . Thanks for taking care of me last night.” She dropped her head. “And all the other nights.”
The door closed before he could answer. He gazed at it a moment before turning away.
He went to the window and pulled back the drapes. It was full dusk, though you wouldn’t know it to look at Essex painting the entire eastern sky with light. Hell of a sight, if you didn’t remember Manhattan before the Times Square Fizzle.
Strange how that had worked out. People were still living in the sections of Queens that had been dusted, but you couldn’t give Manhattan real estate away, even though the bomb had spewed hot stuff only over Midtown. The rest of the island was clean, but empty, except for the decontamination crews and a few thousand squatters, as if Medrano’s plan had succeeded and the device had cut loose with all thirty kilotons. It was the latest New York myth, and maybe the last.
The Big Apple now was Essex. Old Newark, sold to a US-Eurasian consortium after being burned down during the PC riots in the nineties. Big uproar over that, selling a whole American city to foreigners, even though only half the money was overseas and there hadn’t been much of a city left. Good thing Essex had been around when the war started, otherwise a million Manhattanites would have wound up camping out in the Jersey swamps.
He thought of what he’d said to Sarah, and a small wave of pleasure rose within him. Yes—get her out of this hole, a night on the town . . . No, erase that; a whole day. She’d want to get her hair done, some new clothes . . . God knows how long she’d been cooped up in here.
He was about to let the drapes fall when his eyes caught something just outside the window, an object reflecting the light of the room.
The good feeling vanished, replaced by hollowness. Raising the window, he reached out. Flower boxes were attached to the ledge, a sorry attempt at a homey touch, and the bottle was wedged between the bricks and the corner of the box.
He pulled it inside. Vodka, a cheap house brand, perfectly chilled, seal intact. He clutched it tightly, as if he were holding her soul to him, remembering the other bottles, the ones he’d dumped last night. Six empties and one half full. All the same rotgut trash, raw alcohol good only for getting blasted as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
Christ, but there were times he could just give up.
He emptied the bottle in the sink, running the water in case Sarah was still awake, then threw it down the garbage chute. He almost wished he’d saved some for himself, but it was just as well. It would only have gagged him.
She’d never told him what it was that tortured her so. Either it was too personal, too strange, or too obscenely frightening to put into words. He understood that, understood it well. He had his own bad nights.
He’d thought for a while, even hoped, that it wasn’t PS at all, just alcoholism, something that would have happened anyway. But he knew her too well for that. No, it was PS, all right. He rubbed the spot behind his right ear where the EC microcomp lay flush against his skull. Pelton’s Syndrome, the sickness that came out of the interface.
It was a long way from Big Sur to here. He recalled how she’d looked back then, that first night they spent together . . . Actually, he didn’t remember much at all; he’d been too disoriented from his first attempt at tapping the day before. But he’d done all right, evidently. He found out later that Nathan had suggested it to her. Not an order, Nathan Kahn never gave orders, but sex had its place in his system as everything else did, and that night it had been therapy for the new kid, Jason Telford.
She’d been standing in front of the mirror when he awoke, a trim little behind sloping up to a waist which from that angle seemed impossibly small. Sarah was an older woman, all of twenty-two, and he’d been awed by her. But there was a touch of simple male pride in it too . . .
She laughed, and he raised his eyes to meet hers in the glass, realizing only then that he was fingering his skull where the imp had been emplaced two weeks before. He dropped his hand guiltily. “Go on,” she said, turning to him. “Say it.”
“What?”
“About the bioplastic. Everybody does.”
He flushed, all vanity gone, and she threw herself onto the bed.
“Oh, you look so sweet. Now say it.” She started tickling him and kept it up until he admitted he was worried about the bioplastic sending tendrils into his brain.
“You stupid,” she said, now kneading his shoulders. “It can’t do that. It’s synergistic, only growing where the trace elements have been laid down. So.” She pounded his back with each word. “Don’t. Worry. About. It.”
He mumbled agreement, and she told him what else not to worry about: the confusion he’d felt after the interface, the lousy job he’d made of his first try, the rumors about some imps running into trouble. Capped with the line he’d begun to think of as the estate mantra: Nathan had it all worked out.
“He likes you, you know,” she said, wrapping her arms around him.
“Really?” That perked him up: he was afraid he’d made a fool of himself last night, after the trial run. Nathan had been speaking about something that Telford couldn’t quite grasp: the ground state, an idea he’d picked up from some old Englishman—Huxtable? Hurley? He couldn’t remember—that the brain was a reducing valve which cut down sensory information to no more than a trickle, that the implants were a regulator, and that soon they’d be able to see the world as it truly was . . .
“Yeah, really,” Sarah said, running her hands over his chest. She’d told him last night she liked hairy men. “We talked about you yesterday. He sees something in you.” She leaned close to his ear. “I don’t know what,” she whispered as her hands went lower. “But I know what I see.”
There was still some orange juice left. Telford picked up the pitcher and drank the rest. A few months ago they’d tried to make love once again. He’d stopped when he realized she was crying. Back at the estate she’d talked about what fun it would be to share orgasms through the implants. Now she couldn’t bear to touch another human being.
Maybe she hadn’t known the bottle was out there. Maybe she hid it while she was drunk and forgot about it. Yes, that’s what happened.
But she was better off than most of them, because most of them were dead, victims of Pelton’s or the Cossacks. He saw again what had greeted him at the flat in New Orleans: Briggs hanging from the shower nozzle in the dark bathroom, the belt around his neck stretched to twice its length, the face rotted away.
He touched the chip. Nathan’s tool, the lever with which he would move the world. The key to heaven that had opened the gates of hell.
As they would open for him, too, in time. Somewhere down the line, Pelton’s waited. That horrific week last summer—the voices, the dreams, the mad shimmering at the edge of his vision. Someday the valve would open wide, and when it did, Telford would be washed away.
He was nearly asleep, in that soft, half-dreaming state between wakefulness and oblivion. He told the light to shut off and was surprised it didn’t, until he recalled that nothing was computerized here except the phone. It wouldn’t hurt to leave the light on. He closed his eyes and let himself drift.
He’d almost dropped off completely when the phone rang. He tensed, then rolled from the couch and stumbled over to it. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the readout, Ironwood, and the number of the lodge. He snatched the receiver.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re there.”
He recognized Naomi’s voice. “What’s wrong?”
The line was silent for so long that he thought they’d been cut off. Finally she spoke, her voice ragged. “Page was here.”
Telford lowered the receiver and stared at it. Page? For a second the name didn’t register. Page . . . no, that was impossible. Page was dead, food for worms long ago. “What?”
“He was here. Hanging around all day.”
Wait a second, Naomi didn’t know Page, she’d never laid eyes on him. “How do you know it was him?”
“He told me.” Her voice rose in pitch. “Jason, I’m scared.”
That was Page, all right. When he entered a room, fear strolled in right behind him. “Are Cora and Gene okay?”
“Gene was talking to him. I didn’t hear what they said. I stayed upstairs. He kept looking at me . . .”
Goddamit, get to the point. “Naomi, are they all right?”
“Yes,” she said, enunciating the word precisely. “Jason, you’d better get out here.”
He looked at the clock. After ten. There was a redeye at midnight, but it would let him off in Denver and he’d have to wait for the morning shuttle to Butte anyway. “Listen, Naomi, I’ll fly out tomorrow first thing. If he comes back, don’t let him in. Tell him I’m on my way, he’ll have to talk to me.”
“I don’t know how he found out where we were. None of us ever . . .”
“Just calm down. Keep the doors locked, and I’ll be there.”
He heard her sigh. “Okay.” She paused a moment before going on, her voice milder. “I know what I sound like, but he just . . .”
“He got to you. I know. He’s good at that.” He damn well was, if he’d panicked Naomi like this. She was absolutely solid, otherwise he’d never have put her at the station. Page had been bad enough the last time Telford saw him, over a year ago. With Pelton’s he’d be utterly demonic by now.
“Everything else okay?”
“Yes, fine.”
“All right. Get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He waited, but Naomi said nothing more, and he hung up. Hand on the phone, he stared at the blank walls. No pictures, no decorations. It was like a mausoleum, this place . . .
There was a sound behind him. He turned, uncertain he’d heard anything, but it came again. Sarah, calling from the bedroom.
She was under the covers, face toward him, blinking at the light from the living room. Pulling the door half-shut, he made his way to the chair by the bed.
“I heard you talking,” she said. “Did you get a call?”
“Yeah.”
“Anything wrong?”
Should he tell her? No, not tonight. Let it ride—the morning would be soon enough. Let her get at least one good night’s rest. “No, nothing.”
Her eyes were open. He could see no details, just the bare structure of her face, a graceful play of gray and shadow. She raised a hand and brushed it across her forehead. “I had a dream.”
“A good one?”
He sensed rather than saw her smile. “We were at the estate, all of us. You, me, Nathan, everybody. It was after everything happened, and it turned out it was all a mistake.”
“That sounds nice, Sarah.”
“Oh, it was. Nathan was just the way he used to be, and everyone was talking, and you . . . Jase, you were so cute then. So quiet, staring at everyone as if you were afraid to talk.”
“You telling me I’m not cute anymore, lady?”
Her hand reached out to touch his face. “No, Jason,” she said. “I’m not telling you that. You’re smiling,” she went on. “It’s so good when you smile.”
He sat without moving. He would smile for her forever, if that was what it took.
“Oh, Jason, those were the good times.”
He took her hand. “That they were,” he said. “The best.”
The moment stayed awhile, Sarah gazing up at him in the dimness while he held her hand. Finally she shifted her head on the pillow. “Good night, Jason,” she said softly.
“Sleep well, babe.”
In a moment she was asleep. He laid her hand on the covers, got up, and went quietly to the living room.
Essex glittered, if anything brighter than before. That was one town that never slept. A few aircraft were visible, collision lights blinking. Cops, businessmen, partygoers, who knew? Resting his head against the cold pane, Telford closed his eyes.
Page. That was what he was known as. Whether another name went with it or if there was any connection to the one he’d been born with was unknown. Just that one syllable, flat and mocking, challenging the world to learn anything more, the group he’d been with, who had implanted and trained him, or what generation he was. A blank concrete wall.
There was a word for whenever someone vanished or died: he’d been paged.
Telford had run into him only twice. First at the estate. He could still see it with perfect clarity: Ronnie lying there holding his leg, eyes bulging at the red pool that crawled across the tiles, Page standing over him, smoke curling from the pistol barrel. He’d looked like something out of a history book, head shaved to stubble, old-style leather coat reaching to his thighs—a police thug from a European dictatorship of the thirties. Telford often wondered whether the look was deliberate or something Page had stumbled on by chance. Or whether this was a case of similar mentalities converging to the same image decades apart.
He’d just appeared. No alarms went off, no one on guard duty saw him. He was simply there, smiling as if it was the damnedest joke in the world, waiting until he’d gathered enough of an audience, then speaking his piece in a mild voice: leave the Stoner group alone. Don’t try to track, don’t cache any data, don’t even think about it. Drop any interest in Betty Stoner lest she become interested in you.
They’d all been too shocked to do anything, all except Telford.
He’d moved quickly: two steps, a kick, and the pistol had gone flying. Dropping back, he’d waited for whatever move would come, but Page just stared at him as if memorizing his face. Then he turned his back and walked out. No one outside had seen him leave, either.
The second time was at the hub airport in KC. Telford had long forgotten why he’d been on the road that week, or the reason he’d taken that particular route, dangerously close to the old front line and overrun with military and security types. Some desperate errand, most likely. A mission in aid of someone now dead and buried.
He’d been hurrying to catch a connecting flight when there Page was, the same as he’d been in California, down to the coat. A little thinner, maybe, the eyes a little wilder, but that was all.
Page said nothing to Telford, just nodded as if to let him know that he was still around, still taking an interest in things. Telford kept walking and got no more than twenty feet when a sound from behind told him to move.
A chair, torn from the floor, hit where he’d been. He swung around to see Page, hands bloodied, and those eyes, like two holes in the doorway to hell, boring straight through him.
Airport security appeared, along with a few MPs, and Page started running. Telford simply walked off, slowly, as if the whole affair had nothing to do with him.
He had been sure that Page was long gone. Devoured by PS, dusted by the Cossacks, hooked up with the Mob to carry out a few perfect hits before being erased himself.
Now he was back, and not just anywhere, but on Telford’s own ground. It was a direct challenge, no less. Telford didn’t ask himself why; he knew why.
The thought came that he could call in COSSF. Drop a line to Bohlen, the bare facts, no need to identify himself. It wouldn’t take much to get that butcher moving.
But he couldn’t go to the Cossacks, not after Key West. They’d had their chance. The thought of giving anyone to them, even Page, made his stomach turn.
He’d have to handle it himself; and if the worst happened—well, at least it’d be better than PS.
He tried to remember the color of Page’s eyes. Gray, blue, some light shade like that.
Turning from the window, he shut off the light and went to the couch. Tomorrow would be a long day. As it was, he lay awake until nearly dawn. He got up, shaved and washed, then went to the bedroom door.
He couldn’t open it. Couldn’t face her, not after what he’d promised last night. He stood there a few minutes, in the muzziness of too little sleep, half-hoping she’d come out, but the door remained closed. Finally he went to the kitchen, wrote her a note, and put it by the phone. It occurred to him she might be low on money; he’d use a comp at the airport to transfer some funds. A straight transaction, no interface and no problem.
He punched for a cab and left the apartment. Outside, he paused. The sky was still clouded, and there was a fresh layer of snow, bright and unmarked in the cold light of morning. He walked through it to the avenue.