“Killing a man in his house… it’s awkward. Particularly a man who is innocent, legally, of any crime. Also, they wanted to understand the phenomenon. At first the tests were genuine, following Siskin’s plan.”
“But then they tried to cut me up alive on the table.”
“They made that decision earlier, when Balakian died. They all switched to Thompson’s plan, wanting to save their sorry asses. Medved’s statistics only added to their fear. Those numbers made an impression. And then, the failed attempts.”
“Attempts? What did you people do?”
“Well, first Winslow was supposed to put alcohol in your IV. Then Chechug was supposed to give you an x-ray dose strong enough to melt a tin can. When that didn’t work, Winslow tried to inject you with cancer cells, except she stuck herself instead, and no doubt is growing something from that, if she’s still alive.”
“Saalstein… Did those dogs do something like that to my wife?” Gavein went pale.
“I never heard anything along those lines. Her illness resulted from a time when no one knew that you were Death. Whatever the guards did to her during her trip from Lavath has nothing to do with us.”
He appeared to be telling the truth.
“Setting all this up for me must have been a ton of work,” Gavein said.
“Meetings that ran for hours: how to do it in such a way that you wouldn’t guess. Votes taken in the middle of the night. Then Lee… He was to hook you up to a high-tension wire, but you got him first.”
“I did nothing.”
“He died; that’s not nothing. And then your dissection was interrupted by an earthquake. You ended up pulling the plug on the division, not the other way around.”
“The volcano pulled the plug, not I.”
“Amounts to the same thing.”
“There was voting, you said. How did you vote?”
“For, of course. It seemed the best line of action.”
“Then why don’t you push me from this hiding place when one of the squadrons is overhead? A blast of machine-gun fire, and that’s the end of me. And Thompson wastes no more of the government’s money.”
“There are three reasons,” said Saalstein after a little thought. “I give them in no particular order. First, you saved my life, pulling me from the rubble. Whereas Thompson and company would have killed me. If not for you, I’d have been blown into little bits by their missiles.” He pointed toward the ruins. “Second, if Thompson’s boys catch sight of you, it won’t end with machine-gun fire. The whole area in the radius of a kilometer will be hit with such a quantity of bombs and rockets that not one molecule of me will be left intact. And third, even if I decided to lay down my life for humanity, I am convinced that I would be the only one to die. You would come out of it in one piece, once again. Death can’t be killed.”
“So you, too, believe that I am Death.”
“It’s not a matter of belief. I’m accepting the simplest explanation of the facts. You are what you are.”
Thompson’s squadrons flew over, one after the other, and pounded the remnants of the DS to even finer dust. As the ruins grew lower to the ground, the volcano emerged more: a lake of flame, still without a crater. From the depths spewed tongues of lava, red-hot boulders flew, and smoke gathered in a dark cloud. The rising cone, Gavein thought, will bury forever what is left of the DS. Several times the copters threw shells so close that he could hear the fragments whiz by, but the hiding place on the slope was never hit.
58
They waited until evening, though by then the copters hadn’t shown for a couple of hours. Despite the darkness, barely lit by the flashes from the volcano, they had to pick their way past the overhanging sod and slabs of asphalt. Gavein climbed first and helped Saalstein up. At the top, they looked around: the land toward the ocean had sunk several dozen meters with respect to Davabel. They saw rivulets of lava flowing from the volcano’s rising mound. The entire stretch of land was crumpled and cut by a hundred cracks and fissures. Beyond this, hidden by the cliff and darkness, lay the ocean.
It was hard for Gavein to believe that three weeks ago an imposing complex stood here.
They set out toward the skyline of the city, visible in the distance. All around them lay rubble, sections of wall, broken window frames, and other pieces of the buildings that had been leveled in preparation for Gavein’s arrival at the Division of Science.
A thought troubled him.
“Saalstein, do you think the murders of Zef and Laila were part of Thompson’s plan?”
“I know nothing about that, but it wouldn’t surprise me, judging by today’s performance. Maybe Thompson was told some little theory about isolating the contagion of this death.”
“You know something about Ra Mahleiné!” shouted Gavein, grabbing Saalstein by the jacket. “Out with it, you dog, or so help me, I’ll open your head with a rock.
“Easy, Throzz. I know nothing. Yesterday, she was alive. If yesterday was to have been your operation… Carry on like that, and you’ll bring a patrol down on us.”
That worked. Gavein lowered his head and walked quietly.
They passed an area where puffs of steam came from the earth. Again the stink of sulfur dioxide. On the ground were bright efflorescences and small irregular humps like mushrooms or little pegs.
“Fumaroles,” said Saalstein. “We’re getting volcanic activity with all the trimmings. I’ve seen this only in a textbook. Volcanoes are in Ayrrah, nowhere else, in the north there and the southernmost tip.”
They walked on in silence.
“Tomorrow Thompson will come here with tanks. My guess is he’ll get the idea tonight. He won’t sleep, wondering if he’s done everything he can.”
“How do we pass the cordon that surrounds this region?”
“The quake was powerful. If houses in the city were affected, there may be no cordon.”
“And if there is?”
“We let ourselves be caught. They’ll do nothing to you—learning from experience. And they have no quarrel with me.”
At last they reached the first houses. There was no cordon. They went down a dark street, walking on broken glass. Under the star-filled sky they saw that many of the buildings here had suffered considerable damage. There were no lights on in any of the windows. Occasionally an abandoned car. Saalstein tried to start one, then another.
They found keys in the ignition of a station wagon, and the engine started. They got in. Saalstein steered with his good hand; Gavein shifted. They drove slowly, uncertainly. Saalstein decided to risk turning on the lights. The city seemed deserted. They took an avenue in order not to move away from the coast. It was impossible to read the number of the avenue in the dark.
After an hour of driving, they came to streets that were lit. Gavein breathed a sigh of relief. All of Davabel had not been destroyed in some cataclysm; everyone had not been killed.
Now and then they passed another car. Now and then they saw a pedestrian on the sidewalk. Saalstein turned right, to the north. There was no sign here that the southeast part of Davabel had experienced a quake.
59
They pulled into a gas station. Saalstein took out a bill.
“Fill her up,” he said to the attendant, not getting out. That his arm was in a sling and that he was in uniform could appear suspicious. Gavein, as befitted Death, sat in a shadow.
The man came back for the money. “You feel the shaking too?” he asked. “My alarm clock fell off the dresser.”
“We had a bit more than that,” muttered Saalstein. “I thought my stomach would come out of my mouth.”
The man sniggered. “They took care of that Death guy today. Bombed the shit out of the whole area. A mouse couldn’t have lived through it. It was on television.”