"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.k-sucking fairy wh.o.r.e pimp, you a.s.s-kisser, you f.u.c.k!"
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 my name. You have to have a different name. And that"s a girl"s name." 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." 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 fashion. 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. knew. If it understood and volunteered. But-" She gestured. "He doesn"t know; he never did know. He didn"t volunteer-" 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. Mors ontologica. When the spirit is dead." 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."
"I"ll see you later." She paused. "The federal people aren"t going to want to wait until winter."
"But winter it is," Westaway said. "The winter solstice."
"The what?"
"Just wait," he said. "And pray."
"That"s bulls.h.i.t," Donna said. "Prayer, I mean. I prayed a long time ago, a lot, but not any more. We wouldn"t have to do this, what we"re doing, if prayer worked. It"s another shuck."
"Most things are." He followed after the girl a few steps as she departed, drawn to her, liking her. "I don"t feel you destroyed your friend. It seems to me you"ve been as much destroyed, as much the victim. Only on you it doesn"t show. Anyhow, there was no choice."
"I"m going to h.e.l.l," Donna said. She smiled suddenly, a broad, boyish grin. "My Catholic upbringing."
"In h.e.l.l they sell you nickel bags and when you get home there"s M-and-M"s in them."
"M-and-M"s made out of turkey t.u.r.ds," Donna said, and then all at once she was gone. Vanished away into the hither-and-thither-going people; he blinked. Is this how Bob Arctor felt? he asked himself. Must have. There she was, stable and as if forever; then-nothing. Vanished like fire or air, an element of the earth back into the earth. To mix with the everyone-else people that never ceased to be. Poured out among them. The evaporated girl, he thought. Of transformation. That comes and goes as she will. And no one, nothing, can hold on to her.
I seek to net the wind, he thought. And so had Arctor. Vain, he thought, to try to place your hands firmly on one of the federal drug-abuse agents. They are furtive. Shadows which melt away when their job dictates. As if they were never really there in the first place. Arctor, he thought, was in love with a phantom of authority, a kind of hologram, through which a normal man could walk, and emerge on the far side, alone. Without ever having gotten a good grip on it-on the girl itself.
G.o.d"s M.O., he reflected, is to trans.m.u.te evil into good. If He is active here, He is doing that now, although our eyes can"t perceive it; the process lies hidden beneath the surface of reality, and emerges only later. To, perhaps, our waiting heirs. Paltry people who will not know the dreadful war we"ve gone through, and the losses we took, unless in some footnote in a minor history book they catch a notion. Some brief mention. With no list of the fallen.
There should be a monument somewhere, he thought, listing those who died in this. And, worse, those who didn"t die. Who have to live on, past death. Like Bob Arctor. The saddest of all.
I get the idea Donna is a mercenary, he thought. Not on salary. And they are the most wraithlike. They disappear forever. New names, new locations. You ask yourself, where is she now? And the answer is- Nowhere. Because she was not there in the first place.
Reseating himself at the wooden table, Mike Westaway finished eating his burger and drinking his c.o.ke. Since it was better than what they were served at New-Path. Even if the burger had been made from groundup cows" a.n.u.ses.
To call Donna back, to seek to find her or possess her ... I seek what Bob Arctor sought, so maybe he is better off now, this way. The tragedy in his life already existed. To love an atmospheric spirit. That was the real sorrow. Hopelessness itself. Nowhere on the printed page, nowhere in the annals of man, would her name appear: no local habitation, no name. There are girls like that, he thought, and those you love the most, the ones where there is no hope because it has eluded you at the very moment you close your hands around it.
So maybe we saved him from something worse, Westaway concluded. And, while accomplishing that, put what remained of him to use. To good and valuable use.
If we turn out lucky.