His mother let a tiny ripple of a smile move her lips. “It’s a terrible thing to say, Nathan, but your sister isn’t the most likable woman in the world. I’m glad you’re here.” She paused, thinking, then added, “It’s just possible your father and I missed something from the gene pool. Charlene isn’t whole.”
“Can I get you something? A drink of water?”
“No. I’m fine.”
He looked at the ampoule of narcotic painkiller. The syringe lay mechanical and still on the clean towel beside it. He felt her eyes on him. She knew what he was thinking. He looked away.
“I would kill for a cigarette,” she said.
He laughed. At sixty-five, both legs gone, what remained of her left side paralyzed, the cancer spreading like deadly jelly toward her heart, she was still the matriarch. “You can’t have a cigarette, so forget it.”
“Then why don’t you use that hypo and let me out of here.”
“Shut up, Mother.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Nathan. It’s hours if I’m lucky. Months if I’m not. We’ve had this conversation before. You know I always win.”
“Did I ever tell you you were a bitchy old lady?”
“Many times, but I love you anyhow.”
He got up and walked to the wall. He could not walk through it, so he went around the inside of the room.
“You can’t get away from it.”
“Mother, Jesus! Please!”
“ All right. Let’s talk about the business.”
“I couldn’t care less about the business right now.”
“Then what should we talk about? The lofty uses to which an old lady can put her last moments?”
“You know, you’re really ghoulish. I think you’re enjoying this in some sick way.”
“What other way is there to enjoy it.”
“An adventure.”
“The biggest. A pity your father never had the chance to savor it.”
“I hardly think he’d have savored the feeling of being stamped to death in a hydraulic press.”
Then he thought about it, because that little smile was on her lips again. “Okay, he probably would have. The two of you were so unreal, you’d have sat there and discussed it and analyzed the pulp.”
“And you’re our son.”
He was, and he was. And he could not deny it, nor had he ever. He was hard and gentle and wild just like them, and he remembered the days in the jungle beyond Brasilia, and the hunt in the Cayman Trench, and the other days working in the mills alongside his father, and he knew when his moment came he would savor death as she did.
“Tell me something. I’ve always wanted to know. Did Dad kill Tom Golden?”
“Use the needle and I’ll tell you.”
“I’m a Stack. I don’t bribe.”
“I‘m a Stack, and I know what a killing curiosity you’ve got. Use the needle and I’ll tell you.”
He walked widdershins around the room. She watched him, eyes bright as the mill vats.
“You old bitch.”
“Shame, Nathan. You know you’re not the son of a bitch. Which is more than your sister can say. Did I ever tell you she wasn’t your father’s child?”
“No, but I knew.”
“You’d have liked her father. He was Swedish. Your father liked him.”
“Is that why Dad broke both his arms?”
“Probably. But I never heard the Swede complain. One night in bed with me in those days was worth a couple of broken arms. Use the needle.”
Finally, while the family was between the entree and the dessert, he filled the syringe and injected her. Her eyes widened as the stuff smacked her heart, and just before she died she rallied all her strength and said, “ A deal’s a deal. Your father didn’t kill Tom Golden, I did. You ‘re a hell of a man, Nathan, and you fought us the way we wanted, and we both loved you more than you could know. Except, dammit, you cunning s.o.b., you do know, don’t you?”
“I know,” he said, and she died; and he cried; and that was the extent of the poetry in it.
He knows we are coming.
They were climbing the northern face of the onyx mountain. Snake had coated Nathan Stack’s feet with the thick glue and, though it was hardly a country walk, he was able to keep a foothold and pull himself up. Now they had paused to rest on a spiral ledge, and Snake had spoken for the first time of what waited for them where they were going.
“He?”
Snake did not answer. Stack slumped against the wall of the ledge. At the lower slopes of the mountain they had encountered sluglike creatures that had tried to attach themselves to Stack’s flesh, but when Snake had driven them off they had returned to sucking the rocks. They had not come near the shadow creature. Farther up, Stack could see the lights that flickered at the summit; he had felt fear that crawled up from his stomach. A short time before they had come to this ledge they had stumbled past a cave in the mountain where the bat creatures slept. They had gone mad at the presence of the man and the Snake, and the sounds they had made sent waves of nausea through Stack. Snake had helped him and they had gotten past. Now they had stopped and Snake would not answer Stack’s questions.
We must keep climbing.
“Because he knows we’re here.” There was a sarcastic rise in Stack’s voice.
Snake started moving. Stack closed his eyes. Snake stopped and came back to him. Stack looked up at the one-eyed shadow.
“Not another step.”
There is no reason why you should not know.
“Except, friend, I have the feeling you aren’t going to tell me anything.”
It is not yet time for you to know.
“Look: just because I haven’t asked, doesn’t mean I don’t want to know. You’ve told me things I shouldn’t be able to handle…all kinds of crazy things…I’m as old as, as…I don’t know how old, but I get the feeling you’ve been trying to tell me I’m Adam….”
That is so.
“…uh.” He stopped rattling and stared back at the shadow creature. Then, very softly, accepting even more than he had thought possible, he said, “Snake.” He was silent again. After a time he asked, “Give me another dream and let me know the rest of it?”
You must be patient. The one who lives at the top knows we are coming but I have been able to keep him from perceiving your danger to him only because you do not know yourself
“Tell me this, then: does he want us to come up…the one on the top?”
He allows it. Because he doesn’t know.
Stack nodded, resigned to following Snake’s lead. He got to his feet and performed an elaborate butler’s motion: after you, Snake.
And Snake turned, his flat hands sticking to the wall of the ledge, and they climbed higher, spiraling upward toward the summit.
The Deathbird swooped, then rose toward the Moon. There was still time.
Dira came to Nathan Stack near sunset, appearing in the board room of the industrial consortium Stack had built from the empire left by his family.
Stack sat in the pneumatic chair that dominated the conversation pit where top-level decisions were made. He was alone. The others had left hours before and the room was dim with only the barest glow of light from hidden banks that shone through the soft walls.
The shadow creature passed through the walls—and at his passage they became rose quartz, then returned to what they had been. He stood staring at Nathan Stack, and for long moments the man was unaware of any other presence in the room.