Five Great Novels Part 18

"You heard me say that?" Mike said. "That I'm scared to go to the zoo?"

"Yes."

"I never have been to a zoo that I can recall," Mike said. "What do you do at a zoo? Maybe you know."

"Look into different cages and open confined areas."

"What kind of animals do they have?"

"All kinds."

"Wild ones, I guess. Normally wild. And exotical ones."

"At the San Diego Zoo they have almost every wild animal," Bruce said.

"They have one of those . . . what are they? Koala bears."

"Yes."

"I saw a commercial on TV," Mike said. "With a koala bear in it. They hop. They resemble a stuffed toy."

Bruce said, "The old Teddy bear, that kids have, that was created based on the koala bear, back in the twenties."

"Is that right. I guess you'd have to go to Australia to see a koala bear. Or are they extinct now?"

"There're plenty in Australia," Bruce said, "but export is banned. Live or the hides. They almost got extinct."

"I never been anywhere," Mike said, "except when I ran stuff from Mexico up to Vancouver, British Columbia. I always took the same route, so I never saw anything. I just drove very fast to get it over with. I drive one of the Foundation cars. If you feel like it, if you feel very bad, I'll drive you around. I'll drive and we can talk. I don't mind. Eddie and some others not here now did it for me. I don't mind."

"Thank you."

"Now we both ought to hit the sack. Have they got you on the kitchen stuff in the morning yet? Setting tables and serving?"

"No."

"Then you get to sleep to the same time I do. I'll see you at breakfast. You sit at the table with me and I'll introduce you to Laura."

"When are you getting married?"

"A month and a half. We'd be pleased if you were there. Of course, it'll be here at the building, so everyone will attend."

"Thank you," he said.

He sat in the Game and they screamed at him. Faces, all over, screaming; he gazed down.

"Y'know what he is? A kissy-facy!" One shriller voice made him peer up. Among the awful screaming distortions one Chinese girl, howling. "You're a kissy-facy, that's what you are!"

"Can you f.u.c.k yourself? Can you f.u.c.k yourself?" the others chanted at him, curled up in a circle on the floor. The Executive Director, in red bell-bottoms and pink slippers, smiled. Glittery little broken eyes, like a spook's. Rocking back and forth, his spindly legs tucked under him, without a pillow.

"Let's see you f.u.c.k yourself!"

The Executive Director seemed to enjoy it when his eyes saw something break; his eyes glinted and filled with mirth. Like a dramatic stage queer, from some old court, draped in flair, colorful, he peeped around and enjoyed. And then from time to time his voice warbled out, grating and monotonous, like a metal noise. A sc.r.a.ping mechanical hinge.

"The kissy-facy!" the Chinese girl howled at him; beside her another girl flapped her arms and bulged her cheeks, piop-plop. "Here!" the Chinese girl howled, swiveled around to jut her rump at him, pointing to it and howling at him, "Kiss my a.s.s, then, kissy-facy! He wants to kiss people, kiss this, kissy-facy!"

"Let's see you f.u.c.k yourself!" the family chanted. "Jack yourself off, kissy-facy!"

He shut his eyes, but his ears still heard.

"You pimp," the Executive Director said slowly to him. Monotonously. "You f.u.c.k. You dong. You s.h.i.+t. You t.u.r.d p.r.i.c.k. You--" On and on. His ears still brought in sounds, but they blended. He glanced up once when he made out Mike's voice, audibly during a lull. Mike sat gazing at him impa.s.sively, a little reddened, his neck swollen in the too-tight collar of his dress s.h.i.+rt.

"Bruce," Mike said, "what's the matter? What brought you here? What do you want to tell us? Can you tell us anything about yourself at all?"

"Pimp!" George screamed, bouncing up and down like a rubber ball. "What were you, pimp?"

The Chinese girl leaped up, shrieking, "Tell us, you c.o.c.ksucking fairy wh.o.r.e pimp, you a.s.s-kisser, you flick!"

He said, "I am an eye."

"You t.u.r.d p.r.i.c.k," the Executive Director said. "You weakling. You puke. You suck-off. You s.n.a.t.c.h."

He heard nothing now. And forgot the meaning of the words, and, finally, the words themselves. Only, he sensed Mike watching him, watching and listening, hearing nothing; he did not know, he did not recall, he felt little, he felt bad, he wanted to leave. The Vacuum in him grew. And he was actually a little glad.

It was late in the day.

"Look in here," a woman said, "where we keep the freaks."

He felt frightened as she opened the door. The door fell aside and noise spilled out of the room, the size surprising him; but he saw many little children playing. That evening he watched two older men feed the children milk and little foods, sitting in a separate small alcove near the kitchen. Rick, the cook, gave the two older men the children's food first while everyone waited in the dining room. Smiling at him, a Chinese girl, carrying plates to the dining room, said, "You like kids?"

"Yes," he said.

"You can sit with the kids and eat there with them."

"Oh," he said.

"You can feed them later on like in a month or two." She hesitated. "When we're positive you won't hit them. We have a rule: the children can't never be hit for anything they do."

"Okay," he said. He felt warmed into life, watching the children eat; he seated himself, and one of the smaller children crept up on his lap. He began spooning food to the child. Both he and the child felt, he thought, equally warm. The Chinese girl smiled at him and then pa.s.sed on with the plates to the dining room. For a long time he sat among the children, holding first one and then another. The two older men quarreled with the children and criticized each other's way of feeding. Bits and hunks and smudges of food covered the table and floor; startled, he realized that the children had been fed and were going off into their big playroom to watch cartoons on TV. Awkwardly, he bent down to clean up spilled food.

"No, that's not your job!" one of the elderly men said sharply. "I'm supposed to do that."

"Okay," he agreed, rising, b.u.mping his head on the edge of the table. He held spilled food in his hand and he gazed at it, wonderingly.

"Go help clear the dining room!" the other older man said to him. He had a slight speech impediment. One of the kitchen help, someone from the dishpan, said to him in pa.s.sing, "You need permission to sit with the kids."

He nodded, standing there, puzzled.

"That's for the old folk," the dishpan person said. "Babysitting." He laughed. "That can't do nothing else." He continued by. One child remained. She studied him, large-eyed, and said to him, "What's your name?"

He answered nothing.

"I said, what's your name?"

Reaching cautiously, he touched a bit of beef on the table. It had cooled now. But, aware of the child beside him, he still felt warm; he touched her on the head, briefly.

"My name is Thelma," the child said. "Did you forget your name?" She patted him. "If you forget your name, you can write it on your hand. Want me to show you how?" She patted him again.

"Won't it wash off?" he asked her. "If you write it on your hand, the first time you do anything or take a bath it'll wash off."

"Oh, I see." She nodded. "Well, you could write it on the wall, over your head. In your room where you sleep. Up high where it won't wash off. And then when you want to know your name better you can--"

"Thelma," he murmured.

"No, that's _my_ name. You have to have a different name. And that's a girl's name."

"Let's see," he said, meditating.

"If I see you again I'll give you a name," Thelma said. "I'll make one up for you. 'Kay?"

"Don't you live here?" he said.

"Yes, but my mommy might leave. She's thinking about taking us, me and my brother, and leaving."

He nodded. Some of the warmth left him. All of a sudden, for no reason he could see, the child ran off. I should work out my own name, anyhow, he decided; it's my responsibility. He examined his hand and wondered why he was doing that; there was nothing to see. Bruce, he thought; that's my name. But there ought to be better names than that, he thought. The warmth that remained gradually departed, as had the child. He felt alone and strange and lost again. And not very happy.

One day Mike Westaway managed to get sent out to pick up a load of semirotten produce donated by a local supermarket to New-Path. However, after making sure no staff member had tailed him, he made a phone call and then met Donna Hawthorne at a McDonald's fast-food stand. They sat together outside, with c.o.kes and hamburgers between them on the wooden table.

"Have we really been able to duke him?" Donna asked.

"Yes," Westaway said. But he thought, The guy's so burned out. I wonder if it matters. I wonder if we accomplished anything. And yet it had to be like this.

"They're not paranoid about him."

"No," Mike Westaway said. Donna said, "Are you personally convinced they're growing the stuff?"

"Not me. It's not what I believe. It's them." Those who pay us, he thought.

"What's the name mean?"

"_Mors ontologica_. Death of the spirit. The ident.i.ty. The essential nature."

"Will he be able to act?"

Westaway watched the cars and people pa.s.sing; he watched moodily as he fooled with his food.

"You really don't know."

"Never can know until it happens. A memory. A few charred brain cells flicker on. Like a reflex. React, not act. We can just hope. Remembering what Paul says in the Bible: faith, hope, and giving away your money." He studied the pretty, dark-haired young girl across from him and could perceive, in her intelligent face, why Bob Arctor-- No, he thought; I always have to think of him as Bruce. Otherwise I cop out to knowing too much: things I shouldn't, couldn't, know. Why Bruce thought so much of her. Thought when he was capable of thought.

"He was very well drilled," Donna said, in what seemed to him an extraordinary forlorn voice. And at the same time an expression of sorrow crossed her face, straining and warping its lines. "Such a cost to pay," she said then, half to herself, and drank from her c.o.ke. He thought, But there is no other way. To get in there. I can't get in. That's established by now; think how long I've been trying. They'd only let a burned-out husk like Bruce in. Harmless. He would have to be. . . the way he is. Or they wouldn't take the risk. It's their policy.

"The government asks an awful lot," Donna said.

"Life asks an awful lot."

Raising her eyes, she confronted him, darkly angry. "In this case the federal government. Specifically. From you, me. From--" She broke off. "From what was my friend."

"He's still your friend."

Fiercely Donna said, "What's left of him."

What's left of him, Mike Westaway thought, is still searching for you. After its fas.h.i.+on. He too felt sad. But the day was nice, the people and cars cheered him, the air smelled good. And there was the prospect of success; that cheered him the most. They had come this far. They could go the rest of the way. Donna said, "I think, really, there is nothing more terrible than the sacrifice of someone or something, a living thing, without its ever knowing. If it knew. If it understood and volunteered. But--" She gestured. "He doesn't know; he never did know. He didn't volunteer--"

"Sure he did. It was his job."

"He had no idea, and he hasn't any idea now, because now he hasn't any ideas. You know that as well as I do. And he will never again in his life, as long as he lives, have any ideas. Only reflexes. And this didn't happen accidentally; it was supposed to happen. So we have this . . . bad karma on us. I feel it on my back. Like a corpse. I'm carrying a corpse-- Bob Arctor's corpse. Even while he's technically alive." Her voice had risen; Mike Westaway gestured, and, with visible effort, she calmed herself. People at other wooden tables, enjoying their burgers and shakes, had glanced inquiringly. After a pause Westaway said, "Well, look at it this way. They can't interrogate something, someone, who doesn't have a mind."

"I've got to get back to work," Donna said. She examined her wrist.w.a.tch. "I'll tell them everything seems okay, according to what you told me. In your opinion."

"Wait for winter," Westaway said.

"Winter?"

"It'll take until then. Never mind why, but that's how it is; it will work in winter or it won't work at all. We'll get it then or not at all." Directly at the solstice, he thought.

"An appropriate time. When everything's dead and under the snow."

He laughed. "In California?"

"The winter of the spirit. _Mors ontologica_. When the spirit is dead."

"Only asleep," Westaway said. He rose. "I have to split, too, I have to pick up a load of vegetables."

Donna gazed at him with sad, mute, afflicted dismay.

"For the kitchen," Westaway said gently. "Carrots and lettuce. That kind. Donated by McCoy's Market, for us poor at New-Path. I'm sorry I said that. It wasn't meant to be a joke. It wasn't meant to be anything." He patted her on the shoulder of her leather jacket. And as he did so it came to him that probably Bob Arctor, in better, happier days, had gotten this jacket for her as a gift.

"We have worked together on this a long time," Donna said in a moderate, steady voice. "I don't want to be on this much longer. I want it to end. Sometimes at night, when I can't sleep, I think, s.h.i.+t, we are colder than they are. The adversary."

"I don't see a cold person when I look at you," Westaway said. "Although I guess I really don't know you all that well. What I do see, and see clearly, is one of the warmest persons I ever knew."

"I am warm on the outside, what people see. Warm eyes, warm face, warm f.u.c.king fake smile, but inside I am cold all the time, and full of lies. I am not what I seem to be; I am awful." The girl's voice remained steady, and as she spoke she smiled. Her pupils were large and mellow and without guile. "But, then, there's no other way. Is there? I figured that out a long time ago and made myself like this. But it really isn't so bad. You get what you want this way. And everybody is this way to a degree. What I am that's actually so bad--I am a liar. I lied to my friend, I lied to Bob Arctor all the time. I even told him one time not to believe anything I said, and of course he just believed I was kidding; he didn't listen. But if I told him, then it's his responsibility not to listen, not to believe me any more, after I said that. I warned him. But he forgot as soon as I said it and went right on. Kept right on truckin'."

"You did what you had to. You did more than you had to."

The girl started away from the table. "Okay, then there really isn't anything for me to report, so far. Except your confidence. Just that he's duked in and they accept him. They didn't get anything out of him in those--" She shuddered. "Those gross games."

"Right."