“And it is also one of main incentives of technological progress,” Dr. Young finished.
“But every religion on Earth preaches peace,” I argued. “Thou shalt not kill, right? Treat your neighbor the way you wish to be treated?”
“So does every government, Mr. Whales. Yet you would be hard pressed to locate a decade in the last couple of thousand of years during which there wasn’t an armed conflict going on somewhere. You see, by preaching peace as fervently as they do, the war is made to seem something quite out of their hands. A horrible, abhorred thing, but something no one can control. And as for condemning it, I, for one, am not able to recall an occasion during which a prominent clergyman of any denomination would declare that every military man is going to hell for killing.”
“Not to mention those who send soldiers to kill,” I said grimly.
“Yes, that seems to be the popular opinion. Soldiers are guiltless, because they simply follow orders.”
“You sound like you don’t think so.”
“I don’t, Mr. Whales. Those who enlist in armed forces expect to be given orders to kill. Why enlist, then?”
“Don’t have much of a choice anymore.”
“Very true, which is why such an overwhelming majority supports the draft. People hate choice. Well, our little pill helps also.”
“So I take it that draft notice I got started the whole thing. But why did it even matter if they got me or not?”
“Mr. Freud’s employer seems to believe your role in their plans is too significant for him to just let them have you.”
“One of these days I am going to kick his ass.”
“If I am correct, Mr. Whales, you will probably thank him.”
“Right… But if these ‘Administrators’ or whoever had plans for me, then why did they send those… things to kill me?”
“Most likely because they realized that Mr. Freud’s employer had a hand in helping you evade them.”
“So what, they just sweep me under the rug and go to plan B?”
“Quite so.”
“Great.”
“But…”
“Yeah, I know. ‘I have other friends.’ For all I know, I am only alive because your ‘employer’ has plans for me still.”
“I have reconsidered my attitude towards employment some time ago, Mr. Whales. As to his plans for you… Trust me when I say, few things could be worse than the bidding you would end up doing for the other side.”
“But you don’t know what it was.”
“No, I do not know. I do have suspicions, however.”
I leaned back in the loveseat and shook my head. Lloyd was dead. He was really dead. He had been alive yesterday, and he was dead today. I seemed capable of only one clear thought. Looking around me, I suddenly realized I had no idea where I was. I sighed.
“You said the planet was almost ready, Doc.”
“Yes, Mr. Whales.”
“For what? Second Coming?”
“You surprise me. The Second Coming, as you call it, has already happened.”
Oh, I surprise him? “What?” I gaped and glanced at Iris, who didn’t seem quite as shocked.
“The creatures yesterday. The ‘saviors’ are already here.”
“So what are they waiting for?”
“For the Antichrist to show himself, of course. Can’t have the play without the antagonist.”
“The play? You mean—”
“Precisely, Mr. Whales. The War to end all wars. The end of the world.”
Chapter Sixteen
In a cool, sterile, loft-like office with a view on Chicago River, behind a desk of glossy black ceramics just wide enough for a person to spread elbows, plump, stately Dr. Colin Wright sat erect and unmoving, peering into the dark brown leather of a couch standing against the opposite wall. He was breathing heavily and was painfully aware of a sweat bead sliding slowly from his armpit down the curvy side. He felt it tickle the roll of fat just above the waistline of his slacks, hang from it for several long seconds, then plummet down to splash on the shirt. Dr. Wright allowed himself a grimace, but only that. His eyes moved towards the digits on the cylindrical desk clock.
Ten minutes had passed since the phone monitor returned to displaying the picture of his wife, Nora against the backdrop of the Great Pyramids of Giza. Five more to go.
He went through this every single time they called him, because there was no other way.
It was fear, but in the real world he was not afraid. They had never attempted to scare him overtly — not even when one of them called to blame him for Whales a few days back — but even if they had, Dr. Wright was not an easy man to scare when he was awake. He was too pragmatic. He’d seen too many things.
Dreams were another matter. The tranquility of his child-like sleep was one thing he truly obsessed about. It was that one window of escape from reality he could not bear losing. And they possessed the ability to take it away, he knew.
The irony of it was, he had not had a nightmare in fifteen years. Not ever since that one time in the beginning when he woke up in the middle of the night with half of his hair turned completely gray. Inconvenient, but nothing a little dye wouldn’t fix. Ever since, however, he was manically terrified of the possibility. One can get used to anything, except for that which he has tasted once and which has not happened since.
A famous and expensive psychiatrist who had failed to diagnose his own mental condition, Dr. Wright had analyzed this odd, even unnatural lack of nightmares long and hard. Eventually, he had come to the conclusion that nightmares’ absence was a sort of a mental block facilitated by them, and that every conversation carried a veiled threat of removing that block, and maybe, worse yet, sending some nightmares his way. It was never anything blunt — a hint here, a transparent clue there — but it was enough.
In the course of years since that discovery, meticulous in his madness, Dr. Wright worked out the ritual he was presently performing. He would sit motionless for exactly fifteen minutes after every call from them, sweating and imagining an inflated cuff, the kind nurses used for blood pressure measurement, only full-body sized, squeeze his body until it was hard to breathe. He visualized the nightmares, possibly “planted” within him by way of telephone transmission, rising like steam up, out of his wet, dyed hair and through the floors of the skyscraper above out to cosmos, back where they came from.
No matter how insane something might seem, if it works one will stick to it. And it was working for Dr. Wright. The same lack of nightmares that terrified him so much and caused the madness in the first place, also proved the effectiveness of the remedy.
Of course, no one aside from Dr. Wright ever knew any of this. His secretary had long ago been instructed not to bother him under any circumstances when a call came in on that line. If she thought it was weird, she was paid more than well enough not to show it.
Sighing disgustedly at the fifteen minute mark, the red-faced doctor leaned back in his chair, relaxed, relieved and slightly nauseous from feeling the shirt cling to his wet back. Two calls within a week. That never happened before.
He glanced at the blue bottle of brand-new pills and picked it up from the desk. No more failures, the man from New York had said. The new medicine was better, but he needed to step up the counseling.
“Why don’t you do it yourself, then, you powdered son of a bitch,” Dr. Wright said distinctly, confident in his defiance and defiant in confidence, twisting his chair around to face the city. “Do it yourself,” he repeated after a minute, and, with a satisfied nod turned back to his desk, pressed a button and said, calmly now, “Jane? Darling, please check when the appointment is scheduled for Mr. Chase.”