“No! That’s the last thing I want you to do, Frank. Well, the next to the last thing.”
“So what do you want?”
“I want you to convince Maria Elena to go on living, that’s the first thing.”
Frank was astonished all over again. “You know about her? How?”
“Frank,” she said, sounding hurried and impatient, “I’m not going to answer any of those questions, so just stop asking them. I want you to convince her to live, Frank. Then you can leave Grigor in charge—”
“Leave?”
“The others are going to die anyway,” she said, brisk and callous. “You and Maria Elena can live.”
“In jail,” he said bitterly.
“No. Listen to me, Frank. If you go outside and pass around the right cooling tower on the outside — not between the towers — you’re going to see a radio mast on a mountain way ahead of you. If you walk straight toward that, when you come to the perimeter fence you’ll find a small hole at the base of it, dug by animals.”
“The fence is wired. They’ll know when we go through.”
“The switches are in the control section,” she said. “Grigor can turn off the rear security area twenty minutes after you leave, then turn it back on ten minutes later. You’ll have plenty of time to get through. Then you keep walking straight, and when you get to the county road there’ll be a car parked there. No keys in it, but you can jump-start a car, can’t you, Frank?”
“I don’t get this,” Frank said. His mind was swimming; this was James Bond time. How did she know all this stuff, if nobody else knew any of it? The only thing certain was that she wouldn’t answer that question.
“I’m trying to make it up to you, Frank,” Mary Ann Kelleny was saying, “for steering you wrong in the first place. Now, listen. If you can convince Maria Elena to come with you, then when you get clear away you’ll find out that something happened two days ago that will see to it you never have to work again. You did like retirement, didn’t you, Frank?”
Frank couldn’t help it; his mouth twisted with sardonic disbelief: “Another five-mil hit?”
“Oh, you don’t need that much, Frank,” she said, as though they were just kidding around here together. “You do want to retire, don’t you? With Maria Elena.”
Frank looked over again at the funny-looking glass jug on the table; the professor’s experiment. There’s something truly weird going on here, he thought. Truly weird. His voice barely audible, he said, “You know a lot of stuff, don’t you, Ms. Kelleny? You know what’s happening here.”
“Some,” she said.
“And that thing’s loaded, isn’t it? It really is loaded.”
There was a little silence. Then, “Don’t bump into anything, Frank,” Mary Ann Kelleny said. “on your way out.” And she hung up.
44
The half of the telephone conversation that Grigor could hear made no sense. All he knew was, the exertion of the last hour had worn him down to only the smallest spark of self. But at the same time, this delay was taking from his resolve.
The idea of ending it with everybody else; how’s that for the ultimate joke? No longer would I be an object of pity, of study, of embarrassment, of condescension. We’re all in the same boat together, and the boat’s at the bottom of the ocean. Yes, that was a good way to think of it: the ultimate joke on the human race.
But the phone call, the delay, the incomprehensibility of what Frank was saying, all served to confuse the issue in Grigor’s mind. He found himself remembering Boris Boris, that aggressive comic bear, the only other man in the world who was entitled, the man who had appreciated and nurtured Grigor’s small talent, given him something to think about beyond his own imminent end. What would Boris Boris think of Grigor Basmyonov’s last joke?
“Not funny, Grigor. You owe me some good jokes, or what the hell are you doing in my office?”
The doctors at the Bone Disease Research Clinic in Moscow; the doctors at the hospital just a few miles from here. Is this the way to settle their bills?
That’s the problem with getting rid of everybody: there’s nobody left.
What a group we are, he thought. Not one of us has any close living relative, nor anyone who deeply loves us. (A rueful thought of Susan crossed his mind.) And then we had this perfect meeting with the scientist, the coldly rational man who explained to us our own futility and shameful inadequacy, so that even we could see it.
A momentum was there, a readiness to do it, to risk the destruction of everything simply because we ourselves had already been destroyed. And who could blame us afterward? (Another joke.)
The phone call has broken that momentum. I am not the man I was three minutes ago. My revulsion from the human race does not include revulsion from certain humans. Boris Boris. Susan.
I don’t think I can go through with it.
But what about Frank? Grigor watched him, trying to make sense of the phone call, and when it finished and Frank hung up the receiver and turned around, Grigor saw from his face that he too had changed. But in what direction?
Frank looked at the scientist. “It isn’t fifty-fifty,” he said.
The scientist’s face was softer, more pliable, than when they’d first invaded his domain. His emotions now were more readily decoded there. And at this moment, Grigor saw, the scientist was torn, wasn’t sure what to do. He strongly wanted to defend his beliefs, but not if doing so would lead to violence or destruction. And he’d lost some of his earlier assurance in his own theories. He stammered a little, under Frank’s steady look, and then said, “Whatever the odds, I beg you not to do it.”
So it really is the end of the world, Grigor thought, looking again at that bottle in the bright light. That’s what’s in there. It contains nothing that we can see, but it’s a nothing that could make nothing of us all.
Frank was saying, “Maria, why don’t we live to fight another day?”
Maria Elena responded with a haughty, angry look, stepping away from him, putting her hand on the crouched Pami’s shoulder. “You want to live? In this world?”
“It’s the only one we’ve got.”
“We don’t have it! They have it!”
“Maria,” Frank said, “I think we just got a chance to pull ourselves out of this.”
Grigor, pressing his palms onto his thighs to give himself the strength to speak, said, “I don’t have a chance, you know. Neither does Pami.”
Frank turned to him. His eyes looked very sure. He said, “Grigor, I could die twenty times, it wouldn’t change what’s gonna happen to you. You know that.”
Grigor’s eyes half closed as he considered, as he tried to find his place in this. He said, “But I am better testimony if I am here, in this plant. Alive or dead. There’s no point in my making an escape.”
“You’re right about that,” Frank agreed. “But staying behind, you could help Maria and me get clear.”
Maria Elena said, “Frank? You’ve really changed your mind?”
He reached out for her hand, but she wouldn’t let him have it yet. He said, “That thing over there, that’s not suicide, that’s killing everything forever, ending the whole story. Maria? You don’t want to kill everybody.”
“BUT I DO!”
The voice was Pami’s, a terrible amplified crow-squawk. She lunged forward, away from Maria Elena’s hand. She couldn’t walk, but she could scramble on all fours, as quick as a crippled cat, scuttling toward the experiment on the table.