“Nothing.”
“Then why is that light bulb on?”
Philpott had no immediate answer, which was wrong. The hesitation gave the game away, even though Chang tried to salvage the situation by blurting out, “We were testing it when you came in.”
“You weren’t.”
The armed man said, “Grigor? What’s up?”
The Russian looked at him, and pointed a bony finger toward the storage bottle. “That’s the thing they were talking about on television. Him, and the other scientist. The thing that, if it fell down, either nothing would happen or the world would come to an end. The whole world.”
The armed man smiled for the first time, a faint smile but an honest one. He said to Philpott, “You’re the guy says it’s safe.”
All at once, Philpott understood the dangerous depths they were in. The back of his neck felt cold, as though some wind from eternity were blowing on him. Choosing his words with great care, he said, “I say I believe it is safe. No one yet knows. Dr. Delantero, some others, they might possibly be correct, after all. Nothing is proved yet. I would be, of course, extremely cautious with the material until we had tested it a thousand different ways. I would bring Dr. Delantero himself here to—”
The Russian said, “We could test the theory for you, Doctor.” To the armed man, he said, “We just go knock that table over.”
Philpott could hardly breathe. He hadn’t known it was possible to be this afraid. In a choked hoarse voice he said, “Man, why would you do that?”
The Russian’s eyes were sunk into his head, as though his brain looked directly out from the center of his skull. He said, “I’m leaving very soon, Doctor. I don’t mind the idea of taking everybody with me. I like that idea. The best joke I ever thought of.” He turned that fleshless head. “Pami? Should we bring them all with us when we go?”
“Yes!” You wouldn’t have guessed the woman could speak so forcefully, or that she could rise up so powerfully, onto one knee, one foot on the floor, before she had to reach out and clutch at the other woman’s leg for support.
The Russian shrugged. “And we know how Kwan votes.”
They couldn’t all feel that way. But the exotic woman, holding to the black woman’s wrist with one hand, took the armed man’s free hand with her other and said, “There’s nothing for us here, nothing anywhere. We can’t win. Why should it be their world?”
“I’m not going back, that’s all I know” The armed man showed that chilling smile to Philpott again. “It’s a crapshoot, right? Fifty-fifty. Either nothing happens, and we’ll figure out what to do next, or our troubles are over. Even money, right?”
“Please,” Philpott whispered. “Please don’t.”
“Fuck you,” the armed man said, “and the horse you rode in on.” He freed his hand from the woman’s, and walked toward the storage bottle.
Please. But Philpott couldn’t even speak any more. What have I done?
The armed man approached the table. He reached out for the storage bottle, and the phone rang.
Everybody stopped. The armed man looked over his shoulder at the Russian. The phone rang a second time. “The last phone call in history,” the armed man said. “Should we answer it?”
“I will,” Cindy said, stumbling in her hurry as she ran to the desk where the phone sat. They all watched her pick up the receiver. “Yes?” A little pause, and she looked around. “Is somebody here named Frank?”
The armed man frowned, thunderously. “Who knows my name? What’s going on? Who is it?”
Cindy held the phone out to him. “She says her name is Mary Ann Kelleny.”
Ananayel
I just couldn’t. When the moment came, when the time came, I couldn’t. I saw my future, the high far calm reaches of my future, the long ages of emptiness, the occasional Call, the endless time remembering, and I could not. I could not obey.
It is not only Susan. It is the whole existence of which she is a part, the existence that makes it possible for two humans to be so selflessly bound together, to elevate their mutual caring so far beyond their petty selves, for each of them to attain such an intensity of altruism toward one other person that all of eternity does exist in the space of one shared thought.
He should have sent someone with more experience of the humans, someone who had already grown as bored with them as He. I tried to remain aloof, but I could not. What at first seemed to me human squalor has become human vibrancy. The cumbersomeness I first thought of as pathetically comic, I now see as endearing; and with what ingenuity they struggle to overcome their physical helplessness. And the violence of their emotions, once repugnant to me, is now elixir to my pallid soul.
Pallid no more. We all have free will, but we all must be prepared to take the consequences when we exercise it. I know what my consequence shall be: ejection. Like Lucifer before me — but at a much more frivolous level of rebellion — I shall be cast out. But not to join that greatest of dissenters in his dark sphere. No; the punishment for my defection will be suited to my crime. Do I love the humans so much? Then I will become one of them.
But first, I must save them.
43
Frank took the phone from the little blonde girl as though it was hot. Two seconds ago, he’d been ready to risk everything on one throw of the dice — if he got snuffed, that was okay; and if he was still around after he dumped over the professor’s experiment he’d probably be so happy to be alive he might even stand the joint for one more tour — and now he was scared. Now he was scared; not before.
Into the phone, cautiously, as though the damn thing might bite him, he said, “Who’s this?”
“Hello, Frank. Not doing too well, huh?”
It was her voice, all right, he remembered it clearly, and it evoked the picture of her the first time he’d ever seen her, getting out of her car after the blowout, standing there shaking with after-the-event jitters. The lady Nebraska lawyer, maybe thirty-five, tall and slender, with straight brown hair. The one that put the five-million-dollar-job idea in his head in the first place.
He said, “How in Christ’s name did you know I was here?”
“Frank,” she said, “I blame myself. When I said all that to you about the one big job, I didn’t expect you to do anything like this.”
“Am I blown?” he demanded. “Do they have a make on me out there?” Not that it really mattered any more; he just wanted to know.
Surprisingly, she said, “No. I’m the only one who knows it’s you, Frank, and I want to—”
“How?”
“Oh, come on, Frank, what difference does it make? I know you people must be about ready to give up in there—”
Frank looked over at the experiment on the table, and grinned a little. “You could say that.”
“You don’t have to,” she said. “Will you trust me, Frank?”
Why should he? On the other hand, why should he not? She’d treated him decently back in Nebraska, when he changed the tire for her, even tried to give him three hundred dollars to keep him from a life of crime. And if she was really the only one on the outside who knew a guy named Frank Hillfen was among the hijackers, then maybe she was trustworthy as far as he was concerned.
But, still. Why should she be reliable? What was in it for her? Frank said, “That depends. You want me to walk out there and give myself up?”