“I mean, after that.”
“We’ll know when we get there, Koo.”
Mark didn’t like that question, because he not only didn’t know the answer but didn’t want to know the answer. The astonishment of having actually had a pistol fired at him by Peter had forced him to a sudden awareness of his true position, so that now he knew he was living minute by minute, even second by second. He didn’t recognize himself anymore, and without identity he couldn’t begin to think about direction. He was like a person waking from a three-week binge to find himself in the hospital, fed and dry but charged with a variety of felonies about which he has no recollection; this moment is bearable, but any conceivable movement from here is bound to be a change for the worse.
Various wires led from the back of the television set into the darkness of the closet. Mark traced the power-lead, treating that with respect and carefully unplugging it from the wall outlet, but the other wires—aerial, external speakers—he simply ripped loose, then carried the heavy set over to place it on top of the hamper, leaning back against the shattered mirror. Then he turned to look around the room for more barricade material, ignoring Koo’s questioning gaze.
He had always thought of himself as separate from other human beings, isolated and alone, but he’d been wrong. Now he was estranged; in this current situation, he was the only person on the face of the Earth that both sides wanted to shoot at.
There was nothing else to pile against the door. Either what was already there was heavy enough to do the job, or it wasn’t. Since for Mark all potential endings were bad ones, it hardly mattered whether the barricade held or not; to some extent he was doing all this merely because it was the most appropriate action under the circumstances.
So long as he remained in this room, so long as the stalemate continued outside between Peter and the authorities, then Mark still had one lifeline, one thread tying him to the human race; this complex, absurd, contradictory, useless, incomprehensible relationship with Koo Davis. Last night, suicide had seemed the only possible choice, because that moment had been unbearable. Now, the present instant had its nourishing qualities—if he didn’t know better, he’d almost think he’d become happy—so he had lost the thirst for destruction, self or otherwise; still, when the black wave did eventually get here, as it would, he would close his eyes uncaring.
Should he take his father with him?
“Mark! Mark!” It was Peter’s muffled voice, followed by a knocking at the door. “Mark, can you hear me?”
Koo sat up straighter, sending Mark a frightened look. Turning casually to the door, Mark rested his hands on the waist-level television set, smiling with easy familiarity at his fractured images in the broken mirror. He wasn’t particularly worried about Peter shooting through the door at him; those last bullets had penetrated the wood and cracked the glass, but they hadn’t entered the room with any force. Mark called, “Yes, I can hear you.”
“We made a deal with them, Mark.”
Mark waited, but apparently Peter expected him to comment, and the silence lengthened. Mark had no comment, he didn’t live on the same level of reality as Peter, so he merely waited, mildly, for Peter to speak again.
“Mark! Did you hear me?”
“Yes, I heard you.”
“They’ll give us a plane. They’ll give us a clear route to the airport.”
Mark smiled at the silliness of it. In his mind’s eye he saw the sharpshooters on the rooftops, the curve or corner where the car would of necessity briefly slow to a crawl, the side windows starring and splintering all together, and suddenly everybody in the car dead but Koo. Turning to Koo, Mark grinned and pantomimed a sniper with a rifle shooting down from a rooftop. Koo looked blank, then suddenly nodded in comprehension. “Right,” he said. “But with my luck, the guy’d sneeze.”
“With my luck, so would I.”
“One bullet,” Koo said. “Right through the both of us.”
“You’re an incurable romantic, Koo.”
“Oh, I can be cured. I can be cured.”
Peter’s ragged voice sounded again: “Mark! There isn’t time for this!”
Mark shook his head at Koo, and turned back to the door. “Go away, Peter,” he called. “There’s nothing going to happen here.”
“We have to let them speak to Davis on the phone. They have to know he’s alive before they’ll deal.”
Mark made no response. To Koo he said, “Come over here. Lean your weight against this stuff.”
Getting to his feet, Koo said, “We expect visitors?”
“They’ll shoot the lock off in a minute.”
“What an exciting life you lead.”
Peter again: “Forget what happened before! Everything has changed now! We need him alive, he’s our passport!”
“It’s nice to be needed,” Koo commented, leaning his back against the hamper and the TV set.
“Mark!” came Peter’s hysterical voice. “For the last time!”
“Promises, promises,” Koo said.
The sound of the shot wasn’t terribly loud, but the vibration of its impact pulsed through the jumbled pieces of the barricade like a preliminary earthquake tremor, and Koo’s side twinged painfully. “That’s a bigger gun,” Mark said.
“You suppose they got nukes?”
The second shot thrummed into the door; bottles tinkled together inside the hamper.
Seated at the small desk in the crowded trailer, Mike looked up when the radio operator called, “Mr. Wiskiel!”
“Yes?”
“Report of shooting from the house.”
“No,” Lynsey said; too low for anyone to hear but Mike. The color drained from her face, as though she might faint, and he noticed how clawlike her hands became when she clutched at the edge of the desk for support.
Mike concentrated on the radio operator, saying, “Anybody hit?”
“No, sir. They want to know what’s their response.”
“We don’t shoot first,” Mike said. “But we return fire.”
“Mike, please!” Lynsey’s whisper was shrill with urgency.
For her benefit, Mike added, “And nobody fires at sounds. We only respond to direct attack.”
“Yes, sir.”
The radio operator turned back to his seat, and Mike held a hand up to stop Lynsey’s protests before they could start. “Listen,” he said. “The guy hasn’t called back. You know what that probably means.”
“You can’t be sure what’s going on in that house,” she said. “They might be arguing among themselves.”
“Fine. If they are, and if Koo Davis is alive, then he’s still where Merville said he was—in an interior room without windows. Firing from outside the house won’t endanger him.”
“You can’t be sure where he is!”
“I can’t be sure of anything till it’s over,” Mike said. “But I’m not prepared to order my people not to respond when attacked.” Picking up the phone, he added, “I’ll talk to them again.”
“Good.”
But they weren’t answering. He let it ring eighteen times, then all at once the line went dead. When he dialed again, he got a busy signal.
“More shooting at the house,” the radio operator said.
Mike slammed the phone into its cradle; pushing back from the desk, he said, “I’m going down there and see what’s what.”
“I want to come with you.”
He looked at her wryly. “What choice do I have?”
“None,” she said.
After Larry shot the telephone, he felt foolish but defiant. He stood there with the revolver in his hand, the shattered phone on the living room floor, and Peter came blundering down the stairs, his voice high-pitched with a new querulousness, crying, “What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with everybody?”