Beast Of The Heartland And Other Stories Part 8

"Listen," he said. "Okay? Listen to the music and then we'll talk."

"G.o.d, Wade! What is it with you and this dumb music?"

She started to flounce off, but he caught her by the arm.

"If you give it a chance, you'll see what I mean," he said. "But it takes a while. You have to give it time."

"What are you talking about?"

"The music... it's really something. It does something."

"Oh, G.o.d, Wade! This is important!"

She fought against his grip.

"I know," he said, "I know it is. But just do this first. Do it for me."

"All right, all right! If it'll make you happy." She heaved a sigh, made a visible effort at focusing on the music, her head tipped to the side... but only for a couple of seconds.

"I can't listen," she said. "There's too much on my mind."

"You're not trying."

"Oh, Wade," she said, her chin quivering, a catch in her voice. "I've been trying, I really have. You don't know. Please! Let's just sit down and..." She let out another sigh. "Please. I need to talk with you."

He had to calm her, to let his calm generate and flow inside her. He put a hand on the back of her neck, forced her head down on his shoulder. She struggled, but he kept up a firm pressure.

"Let me go, d.a.m.n it!" she said, her voice m.u.f.fled. "Let me go!" Then, after a moment: "You're smothering me."

He let her lift her head.

"What's wrong with you, Wade?"

There was confusion and fright in her face, and he wanted to soothe her, to take away all her anxieties.

"Nothing's wrong," he said with the sedated piety of a priest. "I just want you to listen. Tomorrow morning..."

"I don't want to listen. Can't you understand that? I don't. Want. To listen. Now let me go."

"I'm doing this for you, baby."

"For me? Are you nuts? Let me go!"

"I can't, baby. I just can't."

She tried to twist free again, but he refused to release her.

"All right, all right! I was trying to avoid a scene, but if that's how you want it!" She tossed back her hair, glared at him defiantly. "I'm leaving..."

He couldn't let her say it and spoil the evening; he couldn't let her disrupt the healing process. Without anger, without bitterness, but rather with the precision and control of someone tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a hedge, he backhanded her, nailed her flush on the jaw with all his strength, snapping her head about. She went hardagainst the thick window gla.s.s, the back of her skull impacting with a sharp crack, and then she slumped to the floor, her head twisted at an improbable angle.

Snip, snip.

He stood waiting for grief and fear to flood in, but he felt only a wave of serenity as palpable as a stream of cool water, as a cool golden pa.s.sage on a distant horn.

Snip.

The shape of his life was perfected.

Rachel's too.

Lying there, pale lips parted, face rapt and slack, drained of l.u.s.t and emotions, she was beautiful. A trickle of blood eeled from her hairline, and Goodrick realized that the pattern it made echoed the alto line exactly, that the music was leaking from her, signaling the minimal continuance of her life. She wasn't dead; she had merely suffered a necessary reduction. He sensed the edgy crackle of her thoughts, like the intermittent popping of a fire gone to embers.

"It's okay, baby. It's okay." He put an arm under her back and lifted her, supporting her about the waist. Then he hauled her over to the sofa. He helped her to sit, and sat beside her, an arm about her shoulders. Her head lolled heavily against his, the softness of her breast pressed into his arm. He could hear the music coming from her, along with the electric wrack and tumble of her thoughts. They had never been closer than they were right now, he thought.

He wanted to say something, to tell her how much he loved her, but found that he could no longer speak, his throat muscles slack and useless.

Well, that was okay.

Rachel knew how he felt, anyway.

But if he could speak, he'd tell her that he'd always known they could work things out, that though they'd had their problems, they were made for each other...

The light was growing incandescent, as if having your life ultimately simplified admitted you to a dimension of blazing whiteness. It was streaming up from everything, from the radio, the television, from Rachel's parted lips, from every surface, whitening the air, the night, whiting out hope, truth, beauty, sadness, joy, leaving room for nothing except the music, which was swelling in volume, stifling thought, becoming a kind of thirsting presence inside him. It was sort of too bad, he said to himself, that things had to be like this, that they couldn't have made it in the usual way, but then he guessed it was all for the best, that this way at least there was no chance of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g anything up.

Jesus, the G.o.dd.a.m.n light was killing his eyes! Might have known, he thought, there'd be some fly in the ointment, that perfection didn't measure up to its rep.

He held onto Rachel tightly, whispering endearments, saying, "Baby, it'll be okay in a minute, just lie back, just take it easy," trying to rea.s.sure her, to help her through this part of things. He could tell the light was bothering her as well by the way she buried her face in the crook of his neck.

If this s.h.i.+t kept up, he thought, he was going to have to buy them both some sungla.s.ses.

HUMAN HISTORY.

First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, April 1996.

Stories, I'm told by old Hay (who's told enough of them to pa.s.s for an expert), must have a beginning and middle and end that taken altogether form a shape, a movement that pleases the mind of the listener.

And so in order to give my chronicle of those weeks in Edgeville and the land beyond a proper shape, I must begin before the beginning, create a false beginning that will illuminate the events of later days. I'mnot sure this is the most truthful way to go about things. Sometimes I think it would be best to jump right in, to leap backward and forward in chronology like an excited man telling his story for the first time; but since I've never written anything down before, I guess I'll play it conservative and do as old Hay has advised.

This happened in the summer, then, when the apes and the tigers keep mostly to the high country, the snow peaks east of town, and strangers come from Windbroken, the next town north, and from even farther away, with goods for trade or maybe to settle, and it's more or less safe to ride out onto the flats.

Edgeville, you see, is tucked into a horseshoe canyon of adobe-colored stone, its sides smoothly dimpled as if by the pressure of enormous thumbs; the houses and shops -- s.h.i.+ngleroofed and painted white for the most part -- are set close together toward the rear of the canyon, thinning out toward the mouth, where barricades of razor wire and trenches and various concealed traps are laid. Beyond the canyon the flats begin, a hardpan waste that appears to stretch into infinity, into a line of darkness that never lifts from the horizon. Out there live the Bad Men and the beasts, and on the other side... well, it's said by some that the other side doesn't exist.

I'd taken a little roan out onto the flats that morning to look for tiger bones, which I use for carving. I rode east toward the mountains, keeping close to the cliffs, and before I'd gone more than a couple of miles I began to hear a mechanical hooting. Curious, I followed the sound, and after another mile I caught sight of a red car with a bubble top parked at the base of a cliff. I'd seen a couple like it last time I was to market in Windbroken; some old boy had built them from plans he'd gotten from the Captains. They were the talk of the town, but I didn't see much point to them -- only place level enough to drive them was on the flats. Whoever was inside the car wore a golden helmet that sparkled in the sun. As I drew closer, I realized that the driver was pressing the middle of the steering wheel with the heel of his hand, and that was causing the hooting noise. He kept it up even after I had pulled the roan to a halt beside the car, acting as if he didn't notice me. I sat watching him for half a minute, and then shouted, "Hey!" He glanced at me, but continued beating on the steering wheel. The sound was wicked loud and made the roan skittish.

"Hey!" I shouted again. "You don't quit doin' that, you gonna bring down the apes."

That stopped him... for a moment. He turned to me and said, "You think I care 'bout apes? s.h.i.+t!"

Then he went back to beating on the wheel.

The helmet had a funny metal grille across the front that halfway hid his face; what I could see of it was pinched, pale, and squinty-eyed, and his body -- he was wearing a red coverall that matched the car's paint -- appeared to be starved-thin. "You may not care 'bout 'em," I said. "But you keep up with that nonsense, they gonna start droppin' rocks down on you. Apes like their peace and quiet."

He stopped making his racket and stared at me defiantly. "Ain't gonna happen," he said. "I'm a man of destiny. My future is a thing a.s.sured."

"Yeah?" I said with a laugh. "And how's that?"

He popped open the bubble top and clambered out. The roan backed off a few paces. "I'm gonna cross the flats," he said, puffing up his chest and swaggering in place: You might have thought he was ten feet tall instead of the puny piece of work he was.

"That right?" I said, gazing west toward nothing, toward that empty land and dark horizon. "Got any last requests? Messages to your kinfolks?"

"I 'spect you heard that before," he said. "You probably get lots out here tryin' to make a crossin'."

"Nope, never met anybody else that much of a d.a.m.n fool."

"Well, you never met n.o.body with a map, neither." He reached into the car, pulled out some bedraggled-looking papers and shook them at me, causing the roan to snort and prance sideways. He glanced from side to side as if expecting eavesdroppers and said, "This world ain't nothing like you think it is... not a'tall. I found these here maps up north, and believe you me, they're a revelation!"

"What you gonna do with the Bad Men? Hit 'em over the head with them papers?" I got the roan under control and slipped off him; I must have stood a head taller than the driver, even with his helmet.

"They'll never spot me. I'm goin' where they ain't got the b.a.l.l.s to go." There was no point in arguing with a lunatic, so I changed the subject. "You ain't gonna have a chance to hide out from the Bad Men, you don't quit hootin' at the apes. What for you doin' that, anyway?"

"Just gearin' up," he said. "Gettin' up my energy."

"Well, I'd do it out away from the cliff if I was you."

He glanced up at the clifftop. "I ain't never seen them apes. What're they like?"

"They got white fur and blue eyes... least most of 'em. 'Bout the size of a man, but skinnier. And 'bout as smart, too."

"Now I don't believe that," he said. "Not one lick."

"I didn't neither." I said. "But I know someone who went up amongst 'em, and after he come back, well, I believed it then."

He looked at me expectantly. I hadn't been meaning to get into it, but seeing that I had nothing pressing, I told him a little about Wall.

"The man was huge," I said. "I mean I never seen anybody close to that big. He musta stood close to seven feet... and he wasn't just tall. He was big all over. Chest like a barrel, thighs like a bull. Man, even his fingers were big. Bigger'n most men's dinguses, if you know what I'm talkin' 'bout."

The driver chuckled.

"One peculiar thing. He had this real soft voice. Almost like a woman's voice, just deeper. And that just accentuated his ugliness. s.h.i.+t, I seen apes better lookin'! He had these big tufted eyebrows that met up with his hairline. Hair all over him. He come from one of them ruined cities up to the north. A hard place, the way he told it. Lotta Bad Men. Cannibalism. Stuff like that. But he wasn't no savage, he was all right. Didn't say much, though. I figger he liked the apes 'bout as good as he did us."

"He went and lived with 'em, did he?"

"Not 'lived,'" I said. "Not exactly. Kinda hung around 'em, more like. He was helpin' us, y'see. The apes they steal our babies, and he thought he might be able to get 'em back."

"And did he?"

The roan grunted and nuzzled the driver's chest; he swatted its nose.

"He said we wouldn't want 'em back, the way they was. But he told us a lot 'bout how the apes live.

Said they had this cave where they..." I broke off, trying to remember how Wall had described it. The wind blew lonely cold notes in the hollows of the cliff; the sky seemed the visual counterpart of that music: a high mackerel sky with a pale white sun. "They'd taken the skulls of the people they'd killed, busted 'em up and stuck 'em on the walls of this cave. Stuck 'em flat, y'know, like flattened skull faces all over the walls and ceiling. Painted 'em all over with weird designs. Our babies, our kids, were livin' in the cave, and the apes, they'd go into the cave and f.u.c.k 'em. Girls, boys. Didn't make no difference.

They'd just do 'em."

"d.a.m.n," said the driver, sympathizing.

"Now don't that sound like they smart like men?" I said. "Don't it?"

"Guess it does at that," he said after a bit. "d.a.m.n."

"You don't wanna mess with them apes," I told him. "I was you, I'd be movin' my car."

"Well, I reckon I will," he said.

There was nothing more I could do for him. I mounted up, swinging the roan's head so he faced toward the dark end of everything.

"What you doin' out here?" asked the driver.

"Just huntin' for tiger bones," I said. "I carve s.h.i.+t from 'em."

"Huh," he said as if this were a great intelligence. Now that he saw I was making to leave, he didn't want to let me go. I could tell he was scared.

"You don't think I'm gonna make it, do ya?" he said.

I didn't want to hex him but I couldn't lie. "Not hardly. It's a long way to forever."

"You don't understand," he said. "I got maps; I got secret knowledge."

"Then maybe you'll be all right." I wheeled the roan around and waved to him. "Luck to you!" "Don't need it!" he cried as I started away. "I got more heart than that horse of yours, I got..."

"Take it anyway!" I shouted, and spurred the roan westward.

How did it happen, this world? Our ancestors decided they didn't care to know, so they told the Captains to take that knowledge from them. Maybe I would have done the same if I was them, but sometimes I regretted their decision. What I did know happened was that one day the Captains came down from the orbital stations and waked the survivors of a great disaster, brought them forth from the caves where they were sleeping, and told them the truth about the world. The Captains offered our ancestors a choice. Said they could live up on the stations or on the earth. A bunch of our ancestors flew to the stations to take a look-see: it must have been pretty bad, because not a one wanted to emigrate.

The Captains weren't surprised; they didn't think all that highly of themselves or of their life, and our ancestors got the notion that maybe the Captains felt responsible for what had happened to the world.