‘We want admittance,’ said Sverre. ‘Instead we must settle for knowledge. You will tell us why this war was necessary. Consider how fortunate you are. We could have left you to the flames, as we elected to do with them. The others. Their gimcrack Party, their bankrupt Marxism, their outrageous pretensions – all blessedly extinct. You, by contrast, are ambiguous. You don’t add up. It was your ambiguousness that saved you, that alone.’
George had never thought of himself as being ambiguous.
‘Surely you don’t presume to lay this tragedy at our feet,’ grumbled Overwhite. ‘We did everything in our power to prevent—’
‘Er, wait a minute, Brian,’ said Randstable. ‘Surely they do presume to lay this tragedy at our feet. I mean, when you consider that the alternative is… you know. The extinction loop.’
‘You have no jurisdiction over us,’ said Wengernook. ‘Zero. None. Nada.’
A new voice said, ‘I’m afraid that’s not true.’
Sverre’s table companion was standing. ‘The McMurdo Sound Agreement charters an International Military and Civilian Tribunal,’ asserted the young man as he devoured a glob of lemon meringue pie. ‘The first appendix lists the counts against you. Have no fear – we shall challenge the competence of the court as soon as the trial begins.’
George’s appetite for dessert, a primary drive not long ago, was completely gone. Counts against us? Trial? All because of some ridiculous sales contract?
‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded Brat.
‘Your advocate. Martin Bonenfant, unadmitted counsel for the defense. My staff and I have been hired to argue your case before the judges. I strongly recommend that you retain us.’
‘We don’t need a goddamn lawyer,’ asserted Wengernook.
Bonenfant raked his fingers through his glossy black hair. ‘Yes, you do – though your case is much better than you might suppose. We’ve been researching your enemy’s morals, as well as the many imaginative ways you sought to prevent mutual destruction. Do you realize that the Soviets violated the spirit and at times the letter of both STABLE agreements?’ He devoured more lemon meringue pie. ‘And if all else fails, I’ve got a rabbit or two in my hat. I believe we should go for acquittals, count by count.’
He’s so young, George thought. They sent a child to defend us.
‘Yes, an acquittal strategy is certainly the way to play this one,’ muttered Randstable. Turning, he solicited his co-defendants with large, clumsy gestures. ‘Let me put it this way. A photon that doesn’t exist can borrow energy from the uncertainty relation to make a real positron-electron pair, which annihilates to produce the photon that created it in the first place.’
‘Sounds like witchcraft,’ said Sparrow.
‘No,’ said Randstable. ‘Physics.’
Slowly, anxiously, Bonenfant licked lemon muck from his lips. For the unadmitted, evidently, there was urgency in every pleasure. He explained that, if let upon the earth, he would have been a civil liberties lawyer living in Philadelphia. He would have defended child murderers and neo-Nazis.
George stood up. ‘I would like to assert here and now that I am—’
The event that kept him from saying ‘innocent,’ stopping his tongue as abruptly as an arrow stops a bird in flight, was the sudden arrival of the City of New York’s officers and men. Lieutenant Grass, Ensign Peach, Ensign Cobb, Lieutenant Brust, Chief Petty Officer Rush – and over two hundred others. Down the spiral staircase they came, straight into the main mess hall, a roiling mob.
Snatching steak knives from the banquet table, the front-line officers slashed themselves, then passed the knives to the waiting sailors. Chandelier light sparkled in the black rivers. Clouds of burning sulphur rolled through the mess hall. Unadmitted blood filled the wine glasses and frosted the desserts; it speckled Wengernook’s brow, splattered Sparrow’s hair, rushed down Randstable’s cheeks, matted Overwhite’s beard, stuck to Brat’s hands, pooled in George’s lap.
‘Admit us!’ cried the nullified descendants. ‘Let us in!’
A swamp of blood collected in the center of the table. It swirled and bubbled, spitting out ashes. As Peach and Cobb gestured toward the vortex, something took form – an ebony sculpture rising awkwardly from the ghostly tissues.
A model scaffold. A miniature noose. A little hanging corpse – a doll two feet long, its face a blob, its tongue lolling on black lips. Slowly, drippingly, like a reverse-motion film of a melting figurine, features emerged, eyes, nose, mouth.
George reached into his pocket and drew out his Leonardo. This family is mine, he told himself. No canceled generations can take it from me.
‘Count One – Crimes Against Peace!’ screamed Peach.
‘Count Two – War Crimes!’ screamed Cobb.
‘Count Three – Crimes Against Humanity!’
‘Count Four – Crimes Against the Future!’
The sculpted corpse had acquired Wengernook’s face. It wept tears of ink.
The cousins blew on the scaffold. The black oozy face transmogrified. Now Randstable was being executed for war crimes. Now Sparrow. Overwhite. Brat.
‘They’re just trying to scare us,’ said the general.
‘They’re succeeding,’ said Randstable.
‘All they want is an explanation,’ said Overwhite.
George pressed his lips to the painting, kissed Holly’s stepsister. He looked at the doll, saw what he knew was coming, a relentless transformation of the Brat-face into a George-face. He had always wished his nose was smaller. There will be a birth, he vowed. For unto us an Aubrey Paxton will be born. Nostradamus was on to something. I am innocent. Aubrey will be admitted to the good, resilient earth.
CHAPTER NINE
Morning finished reading the last chapter of Merribell Braddock’s Scarlet Passions, closed the book, and, without particularly meaning to, sighed.
Before her career was cut short by the end of the world, Merribell Braddock had single-handedly contributed over three hundred titles to the genre of romantic fiction. Scarlet Passions was as false as Olaf Sverre’s left eye, and yet, because it described the love of a woman for a man, Morning was touched. Poor extinct Merribell had reached right into Morning’s throat and raised a lump. The guileful author was making her see that her feelings for George – for his rough body and deceptively simple personality – definitely qualified as romantic.
‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’ he said to her as he entered the office.
‘Them?’
‘The unadmitted. I love a shadow.’
‘I’m human,’ she said. ‘I’m human, and you love your dead wife, and I’m not her.’
George released a sharp, explosive moan. Why bring up Justine? Wasn’t it their duty to focus on the future? ‘You’re asking me to believe there were no unadmitted therapists in Antarctica? They had to go outside their race?’
‘The McMurdo framers failed to anticipate the survivor’s guilt problem. When they went to Chicago to kidnap Randstable, I offered my services. I was given an audience with Sverre. He hired me. No pay – but I would get to live out my life, such as it is.’
She removed the sacrificial knife from the wall and rested the blade against her wrist.
‘My blood is as red as yours, George. It’s as red as the blood of the innocents whose hearts were excised by this knife.’
He thought of her coming pain, winced. ‘Don’t. I’ve seen enough blood lately.’ She was human.