Today, Regina thought, there would be a vacancy in a very high place.
She started to speak, to say something like You greedy bastard, or I know everything, or I’m not letting you do this any longer, but she decided to let the gun do the talking. As soon as the shot was heard down below, the security men in their golden Segway chariots would be racing up the long curving drive. So she wouldn’t have a lot of time to write her letter and finish herself off. It was time. Time time time…way past time.
She aimed the revolver at the top of Leon Kushman’s head of thick mink-brown hair and her finger started to squeeze the trigger. Her heart was beating very hard. She wondered if she should shield her face with her other hand, because she didn’t want any of his brains on her. No, no, she decided; she needed both hands to steady the gun.
Do it, she told herself.
Yes.
Now.
But just as Regina Jericho, the former Regina Clanton, began to put some strength into the trigger pull the sky blew up.
The noise was not the solemn voice of God speaking out to save the life of Jefferson Jericho. It was more like the ear-splitting blast of a thousand demonic voices shouting at once in harsh and unknown tongues, an explosion at the zenith of a Tower of Babel in Hell, and then it turned into the low dark mutterings of a madman in a basement, speaking in riddles.
Jefferson had fallen out of his chair. The entire chair had gone over. The noise had made Regina whirl around in time to see a fiery red flash in the sky to the west, maybe twelve thousand feet up over the green fields and rolling pastures. And from the center of this flash, as if making itself whole as it slid out of nothingness, was a huge triangular monster mottled with yellow, black, and brown. Staring at it, transfixed by this scene that froze her with a horror she had never known, not even when her father in his Baptist rages locked her in a dark closet while he beat his wife—her mother—with the buckle end of a belt, Regina felt the gun fall from her fingers into the yielding Bermuda grass.
And Jefferson’s voice rose up, the voice that thousands upon thousands depended on for wisdom, sustenance and wealth. Except now he spoke in what was almost a whimper. He said, “God save us.” Then he first looked into Regina’s face and next saw the gun on the ground. He reached for it with a shaky hand, and when he picked it up he gave her an expression that made her think of a closet door shutting in her face. And click went the lock.
Now, in her bed in that same English manor house overlooking the same yet terribly changed New Eden, Regina Jericho pressed her hand against her mouth because she wanted to scream. It would be daylight soon; the new gods would make it daylight, except it would be like the light Jefferson had just switched on in the bathroom. It would be a little too bright and a little too blue, and it would offer no real comfort or warmth. But the citizens of New Eden were alive, and they were well taken care of. They were accepted, in the new order of things. And now Regina heard the water running in the bathroom sink, and she knew also that the water was different; it was clean and clear, yes, but it left an oily texture on the skin that could not be towelled or wiped or scrubbed away. The water was running, and Jefferson was splashing his face before he shaved with his electric razor.
He had told Regina, in one of his hollow-eyed confessions of the thing, that she liked him to be clean-shaven when he arrived. After she called him, and that little tingling began at the back of his neck. Of course no one had any of those fancy razors with four or five blades anymore. Not even a razor with a single blade. There were knives in the kitchen, yes; but when Regina had tried to cut her throat with one last December, it had turned to something as soft as rubber and couldn’t have cut a chunk of melting ice cream. Then it had turned back to a sharp blade again when she’d returned it to the drawer.
They’re watching us, Jefferson had told her. Always watching. They won’t let us hurt ourselves.
But why? she’d asked, in one of her panic states. Why? What do they want with us?
They like us, Jefferson had answered. She likes us.
And then he’d given the grin that might be a ghost of itself because his soulful dark brown eyes were so haunted, but it was still the grin of a High Roller who wanted always to be on the winning side, and he’d said quietly She likes me. And everything and everyone else is like…a child with an ant farm, I guess. Just watch the ants and see what they do. The ants go round and round and think they’re going somewhere. Think they have freedom. Or whatever that means to an ant. Baby, I think I’m going crazy.
No, Regina had said, with the fire of hatred and disgust in her eyes. I am not your baby anymore.
She kept her eyes closed and lay as still as death. It was the only way to keep on living, if this was really life. The citizens of New Eden had no choice. They were all ants, and the ant farm was in its own little box somewhere far away from all that had been known before. Somewhere that made the mind want to stop thinking, because there was no answer to the question of where.
She heard Jefferson suddenly choke and throw up into the toilet. After a minute or so he flushed it and the fouled artificial water went to…where? He was afraid, she knew. Deathly afraid. If she reached over and touched his bed, she would feel the dampness of the sweat that had leaped from his pores as soon as he had heard—felt—the call. But he would go, because if he did not the pain would start at the back of his neck until it felt as if his skull might shatter. He’d told her this, as if she cared.
Go on, get dressed, she told him mentally. Get dressed and get the fuck out of here and go to the arms of your ultimate mistress…
She assumed the thing had arms. She had never asked, and Jefferson had never said. But when he got back—and that might be days, because he said time was messed up in that place beyond knowing—he would be sick again and cry like a little boy curled up in a corner, a little boy in a big man’s skin and suit. Regina would have no sympathy for him. Not an iota, because the real God of this Universe had decided to bring down the house on the High Rollers, and all of New Eden had been cast from the garden in the shadow of the snake.
Just let me sleep, she thought. Please…God…let me sleep.
But Regina would not sleep until her husband had emerged from the bathroom, had gotten himself dressed in a dark blue suit, white shirt, and tastefully-patterned tie—which he had a hell of a lot of trouble tying, as usual—and then left the room to go downstairs. He walked heavily in his shiny black wingtips, as if on the way to his own hanging.
Go to hell, she thought. You deserve it.
Then he was gone, and she did go back to sleep after a few long minutes of silent weeping, because the ant farm was a cruel, cruel place.
H
Jefferson Jericho opened the glass doors that led out to the rear terrace. He walked out upon the terrace and then down the stone steps to the backyard, which seemed to go on forever. Looking up into the dark, he saw no stars. There were never any stars. He continued to walk out further and further across the lawn, his heart racing, his mouth dry, his boyishly handsome face drawn into a tight mask and his teeth gritted so hard they might crack under the pressure. Several already had. His front teeth had broken into jagged edges, but in a few days they were just fine again.