"Ah," said Kline. "I"m afraid so."
"Look at you," said Torn-Lip. "Do you want to die in bed?"
"You don"t want to die in bed," said Low Voice.
"We"re here to save you," said Torn-Lip.
"I don"t want to be saved," said Kline.
"He doesn"t want to be saved," said Low Voice.
"Sure he does," said Torn-Lip. "He just doesn"t know it yet." "But I "
" Mr. Kline," said Torn-Lip, "we have given you every opportunity to be reasonable. Why didn"t you take advantage of either of the tickets we left for you?"
"I don"t need your ticket," said Kline.
"When was the last time you ate?" asked Low Voice.
Torn-Lip reached out and prodded Kline"s face with a gloved finger. "Clearly, you are your own worst enemy, Mr. Kline."
"Depression," said Low Voice. "La.s.situde, ennui. I so diagnose."
"Look," said Kline, struggling to lift himself up a little in the bed. "I"m going to have to ask you to leave."
"He sits," said Torn-Lip.
"Or nearly so. Who says the man doesn"t have any fight left to him?"
"That"s the spirit," said Torn-Lip. "That"s the man who can have his hand cut off and not flinch."
"Come away with us, Mr. Kline."
"No," said Kline.
"What can we say to convince you?"
"Nothing," said Kline.
"Well, then," said Torn-Lip. "Perhaps there are means other than words."
Kline watched as the man grasped one of his gloved hands with the other. He twisted the hand about and levered it downward and the hand came free. Kline felt his stump tingle. The other man, he saw, was doing the same thing. They pulled back their sleeves to show him the bare exposed lumps of flesh in which their forearms terminated.
"You see," said Torn-Lip, "just like you."
"Come with us," said the other.
"But," said Kline. "I don"t "
"He thinks we"re asking," said Torn-Lip, leaning in over the bed, his damaged mouth livid. "We"re not asking. We"re telling."
II.
Before he knew it, their hands were screwed back on and they had him out of the bed and were dragging him down the emergency stairwell.
"Wait," he said. "My claw."
"Your claw?"
"For my hand."
You don"t need it, they claimed, and kept pulling him down the stairs.
"Where are you taking me?" he asked.
"He wants to know where we"re taking him, Ramse," said Low Voice.
"To the car," said Torn-Lip said Ramse grunting the words. They came to a landing and Kline felt his own body sway to one side and then steady itself. Ramse was beside him, his head sticking out from under Kline"s arm, his torn lips tight. "Tell him we"re going to the car," Ramse said.
"We"re going to the car," said Low Voice, and Kline looked over to find Low Voice"s head under the other arm.
"But," he said.
"Enough questions," said Ramse. "Just try to move your feet. If you have them, may as well use them."
He looked down and could not see feet, only legs. There was a whispery sound, but it wasn"t until they left the landing and started down the next set of stairs and the sound changed to a thumping that he realized it was his own feet dragging. He tried to get them underneath him, but the two men were moving too quickly and all he could do was to nearly trip them all down the stairs.
"Never mind, never mind," said Ramse. We"re almost there." And indeed, Kline realized, they were pushing through the fire exit door and into full sunlight. There was a car there, long and black with tinted windows. They hustled him into the back of it.
Ramse got in on the driver"s side, Low Voice on the other. There was something wrong with the steering wheel, Kline noticed, as if a cup holder had been welded into it. Low Voice opened the glove box, awkwardly groped a candy bar out of it with his artificial hand, pa.s.sed it back to Kline.
"Eat this," he said. "It"ll help focus you."
Kline heard the locks snap down. He took the candy bar, began to strip the wrapper off it. It was almost more than he could manage. In the front, the two men were shucking their coats and hats, piling them on the seat between them. He watched Ramse snap off his artificial hand, glove and all, and drop it atop the pile. Low Voice did the same. "That"s better," Low Voice said.
Kline ate a little of the candy bar. It was chocolate, something crispy inside it. He chewed. Ramse, he realized, was holding his remaining hand up, toward the other man.
"Gous?" he asked.
"What?" the man said. "Yes, right," Gous said. "Sorry."
With his single hand he reached out and took Ramse"s remaining hand and twisted it. Kline watched the hand circle about and break free. Ramse rubbed his two stumps against each other. Gous reached out and took hold of Ramse"s ear, tore it off. It came free, leaving a gaping unwhelked hole behind.
"There," said Ramse. "That"s better." He looked at Kline in the rearview mirror, lifted up both stumps. "Like you," he said, smiling. "Only more so."
They drove, the city slowly dissolving around them and breaking up into fields and trees. Gous kept rummaging in the glove box, pa.s.sing back food. There was another candy bar, a plastic bag of broken pretzels, a tin of sardines. Kline took a little of each, left what remained on the seat beside him. He was beginning to feel a little more alert. Outside, the sun was high; even through the tinted gla.s.s it looked hot outside. They turned right and went up a ramp and entered the freeway, the car quickly gaining speed.
"Where are we?" Kline asked.
"Here we go," said Gous, ignoring him.
"Smooth sailing from here on out," said Ramse. "For a while anyway."
"But," said Kline. "Where, I don"t "
"Mr. Kline," said Gous. "Please sit back and enjoy the ride."
"What else?" asked Kline.
"What else?" said Gous.
"What do you mean what else?" asked Ramse.
"What else comes off?"
"Besides the hands and the ear?" said Ramse. "Some toes," he said, "but they"re already off. Three gone from one foot, two from the other."
"What happened?" asked Kline.
"What do you mean what happened, Mr. Kline? Nothing happened."
"We don"t do accidents," said Gous. "Accidents and acts of G.o.d don"t mean a thing, unless they"re followed later by acts of will. Pretzel?" he asked.
"Your own case was hotly debated," said Ramse. "Some wanted to cla.s.sify it as accident."
"But it was no accident," said Gous.
"No," said Ramse. "Others argued, successfully, that it was no accident but instead an act of will. But then the question came An act of will on whose part? On the part of the gentleman with the hatchet, surely, no denying that, but responsibility can hardly rest solely with him, can it now, Mr. Kline?" He turned a little around as he said it, pivoting his missing ear toward Kline. "All you had to do was tell him one thing, Mr. Kline, just a lie, and you would have kept your hand. But you didn"t say a thing. A matter of will, Mr. Kline. Your will to lose the hand far outweighed your will to retain it."
Outside the highway had narrowed to a two lane road, cutting through dry scraggled woods, the road"s shoulder heaped in dust.
"What about you?" Kline asked Gous.
"Me?" said Gous, blushing. "Just the hand," he said. "I"m still new."
"Have to start somewhere," said Ramse. "We brought him along because the powers that be thought you might be more comfortable with someone like you."
"He"s not like me."
"You have one amputation, he has one amputation," said Ramse. "Yours is a hand, his is a hand. In that sense, he"s like you. When you start to look closer, well..."
"I used anesthetic," said Gous.
"You, Mr. Kline, did not use anesthetic. You weren"t given that option."
"It"s frowned upon," said Gous, "but not forbidden."
"And more or less expected for the first several amputations," said Ramse. "It makes you exceptional, Mr. Kline."
Kline looked at the seat next to him, the open tin of sardines, the filets shining in their oil.
"I"m exceptional as well," said Ramse. "I"ve never been anesthetized."
"He"s an inspiration to us all," said Gous.
"But that you cauterized your wound yourself, Mr. Kline," said Ramse. "That makes you truly exceptional."
"I"d like to get out of the car now," said Kline softly.
"Don"t be ridiculous, Mr. Kline," said Gous, grinning. "We"re in the middle of nowhere."
"I could count the number of people who self-cauterize on one finger of one hand," said Ramse.
"If he had a hand," said Gous.
"If I had a hand," said Ramse.
They drove for a while in silence. Kline stayed as still as he could in the back seat. The sun had slid some little way down the horizon. After a while it vanished. The tin of sardines had slid down the seat and were now at an angle, their oil leaking slowly out. He straightened the tin, then rubbed his fingers dry on the floor carpeting. It was hard not to stare at Ramse"s missing ear. He looked down at his own stump, looked at Gous" stump balanced on the seat"s back. The two stumps were actually quite different, he thought. The end of Gous" was puckered. His own had been puckered and scarred from the makeshift cauterization; after the fact, a doctor had cut a little higher and smoothed it off, planed it. Outside, the trees, already spa.r.s.e, seemed to vanish almost entirely, perhaps partly because of the gathering darkness but also the landscape was changing. Ramse pushed one of his stumps into the panel and turned on the headlights.
"Eight," said Ramse, gesturing his head slightly backwards.
"Eight?" asked Kline. "Eight what?"
"Amputations," said Ramse. Kline watched the back of his head. "Of course that doesn"t mean a thing," he said. "Could be just eight toes, all done under anesthetic, the big toes left for balance. That should hardly qualify for an eight," he said.
Gous nodded next to him. He held up his stump, looked over the back. "This counts as a one," he said. "But I could have left the hand and cut off all the fingers and I"d be a four. Five if you took the thumb."
They were waiting for Kline to say something. "That hardly seems fair," he offered.
"But which is more of a shock?" asked Ramse. "A man losing his fingers or a man losing his hand?"
Kline didn"t know if he was expected to answer. "I"d like to get out of the car," he said.
"So there are eights," said Ramse, "and then there are eights." They came to a curve. Kline watched Ramse post the other hand on the steering wheel for balance, turning the wheel with his cupped stump. "Personally I prefer a system of minor and major amputations, according to which I"d be a 2/3.
"I prefer by weight," said Gous. "Weigh the lopped off organ, I say."
"But you see," said Ramse, "bled or unbled? And doesn"t that give a certain advantage to the corpulent?"
"You develop standards," said Gous. "Penalties and handicaps."
"Why do you need me?" asked Kline.
"Excuse me?" asked Ramse.
"He wants to know why we need him," said Gous.
"That"s easy," said Ramse. "A crime has been committed."