Alien Accounts (23 page)

That weekend, Anne and Eric went to their special place.

After parking the car in a shady grove of frismia, he led her along their own hidden path, down to a slanting platform of rock, half-awash in the mountain stream. Here they were completely hidden from the world by merriwether, frondy bagwort, smilax and the dark shiny leaves of rufus. At the very edge of the stream grew grieving nace, lithia, bright bloodmedal. Alone with him in this paradise, Anne felt no compulsion to speak; Eric seemed to feel the natural sanctity of the place no less than she.

He performed his usual ritual first, alone, then she followed suit. Yet not alone, for it was the cool little stream which, without touching them, brought them together. Anne wondered for a moment whether her husband, Stoat, had someone watching her now – but then her shame, too, was washed away by the purifying trickle.

Afterwards, Eric offered her a mentholated cigarette, and took one himself. They consumed this fragrant communion in silence, watching the sky go from gold to red. Anne imagined she were inside a great, translucent eyeball, looking out through the pupil of the sun to see …

‘The drive-in’s open at sundown. We’d better get going.’

‘What is it? I think I’ve seen
it – Witch of Agnesi?’
She bent to pick a fragrant sprig of parson’s nose.

‘No,
Return of the Zomboids
and I think
The Gurk
.’

‘Yes, I remember
Attack of the Zomboids
. They were the ones made of clouds or pus or something, weren’t they? And all covered with electric hair?’

‘No,’ said Eric. ‘I think you’re thinking of the Fings. The Zomboids were transparent. They were like man-shaped jellyfish.’

The President of the United States rose to welcome Kravon, beckoning him to sit down at the desk with the Great Seal.

‘Mr President!’

‘Surprised to see me, Kravon? Well, I know it’s not my usual office, but I heard they were interviewing you for retirement, and I thought I’d look in. Now, we’ll talk in a moment about that pension plan, gold watch and so on, but right now let’s examine your safety record.

‘You see, the country – and the company – just can’t see turning loose a man who lets his department get a mess of accidents on the books. Now I see here …’

As the president lunged forward to check the record, one of the elastics holding on his vinyl face snapped. The face fell on his desk, spun around clumsily on the famous nose, and came to rest. Lucky, Travers thought, he’d had the foresight to wear another under it.

Kravon leaped up. ‘You’re not the president!’ he screamed. ‘Impostor! Fake! You’re fake like everything else!’

The other spoke calmly, moving closer to the lamp. ‘A little test of your faith, my child. Don’t you recognise me?’ He turned the desk lamp upwards, to shine on the shadowy eyes, the sucked-in cheeks, the tight, senescent smile like a
rictus mortui
.

‘No! It can’t be!’ Kravon was confused. He mustn’t be allowed to doubt again, to reach for this mask.

‘His Holiness? No, my son, I bear some resemblance, true, to the infallible personage, but no, I am but a humble priest. The name is Father (he rhymed it carefully with
lather)
Patrick O’Brien.’

Removing the rest of his presidential shell, he stood revealed in his threadbare black cassock. ‘Tell me what ails yer soul, me boy. Have ye broken inny of the Lard’s commandments on conthraception, now? Throubled by guilty dreams, are ye? Peerify yerself through confession, the sacrament of Pinance. Kneel down.’

Kravon knelt on the comfortable carpet and bowed his head, displaying the tonsure of age.

‘Now I hope ye won’t mind if I put on a few vestments while ye talk. I’m goin’ ta the stockhalders’ meetin’, ta invoke a blessin’ on the union of Drum Inc. with Lion Oil.’

So while the manager of Cable Accounts began to murmur his secrets, Travers kissed, flashed, and girded himself in appropriate and inappropriate quasi-religious garments: alb, stole, cincture, scapular, rosary, cross, crucifix, skullcap, wimple, dalmatic, chasuble, cope, medals religious, sacred heart badge, epaulets, chevrons, stars, wings, battle ribbons, medals military, badges, buttons, pins, stars, garter, codpiece, doublet, stomacher, belts, bandoliers, spurs, studs, dickey, rosette, holster, scabbard, corsage, cockade, toga, ermine, jackboots, fez, homulka, tiara, coronet, crown, mitre, triple tiara, biretta, stetson, campaign hat, helmet, living bra, overseas cap, green beret, baseball cap, football shoulder pads, g-suit …

‘Hell, Anne,
I
know you haven’t encouraged him, but the poor guy’s only human – what’s left of him – and you’re a damned fine piece.

‘The thing is, he’s fallen way the hell behind in the mail sorting. And every time you go in to help him catch up, he gets farther behind. It’s obvious the guy’s crazy about you.’

‘But Phil, I’ve tried everything I can to discourage him …’

‘Listen, tell him you’re all dated up with the vice president.’

‘Eric? Oh, Eric doesn’t mean a thing to me. I mean, we’re just – mutual friends, if you know what I mean.’

‘Makes no difference. Just go in there and say, “Listen, Ray, lay off. I’m Eric Bland’s girl.” That’ll cool him down. Oh yes, and while you’re at it, take in these photos to be guillotined, will you. And tell him to hurry up with it.’

‘Then, Father, I put my farm in the soil bank, and I joined a Christmas Club, and I bought Defense Bonds, and I put blood in the blood bank, and willed my cornea to an eye bank, and put my money in a Swiss bank, and the gold from my teeth I left instructions to be deposited in a safety deposit box under the name “Max Heiliger”.

‘And I invested some sperm in a sperm bank, bought some gilt-edge securities and some blue-chip stocks, and I invested more money in National Banks, State Banks, County banks, and then I bought some insurance.

‘I insured my home, life, wife, car, farm, crop, valuables, health, children, dog. Then I gained a plenary indulgence for myself, my wife and children, and our neighbors on both sides. And I built and stocked up our bomb shelter and insured that, and put in a machine gun, grenades, plenty of ammo, and then I installed new locks all over the house, burglar alarms, bullet-proof glass, and I put a second, secret bomb shelter under our basement.

‘Then I put up a cyclone fence with barbed wire across the top, and inside that a bomb-proof wall with broken glass on top, and inside that an ornamental wrought-iron fence with spikes on top, and inside that an electric fence. I put in an emergency generator, a nurse in residence, an operating room in the basement, electrostatically-filtered air conditioning, a gas leak alarm, and a well.

‘I studied all the consumer magazines, paying particular attention to safety recommendations, and I bought only approved appliances. I rewired the house, had new gas and water pipes fitted. Then I subscribed to a freezer plan, laid in a year’s supply of food, and I subscribed to a cryogenic storage plan for when I should die. I engaged the Night and Fog Security Agency to check all the locks and warning devices every night and report to me over television, I bought a pair of Alsatians and a pair of Dobermans and a canary to warn us of coal gas. I had the family immunised against tetanus, typhus, smallpox, etc., etc.; I fumigated once a month and bought a cat and a rat terrier.

‘I hired a mechanic full-time to check my car over, piece by piece, and I had him install every new safety device I could find. I rotated my tires weekly and traded them in every 5,000 miles.

‘I installed a door-answering system with one-way mirror, microphone, metal detector, radiation detector, and fluoroscope; I sealed the fireplace and reinforced the walls and roof, and had a monthly check for dry rot, mold and termites. Then I began giving tithes; took my wife to the best psychiatrist and my children to the best child-guidance psychotherapist, for check-ups; I put explosion-resistant screening in front of the TV set, moved all electric receptacles well out of the children’s reach, hired a round-the-clock guard to keep them out of the kitchen, locked all poisons in a safe to which only I knew the combination. I fireproofed the house, and …’

‘And so,’ Anne Stoat admitted, ‘I don’t really know my husband. I can’t really blame him for wanting someone to keep an eye on me. He probably thinks of me as “the enemy”.’

Bob signalled the waiter and ordered two more pigeon feathers. ‘But you’ve never even
seen
him?’

‘We were married by proxy. He was on a big case at the time, invasion of Antarctica or something. No, I’ve never seen him – though I do watch the Thursday night TV program based on his life, and they say it’s cast very authentically.’

‘But you, ah, sleep together?’

‘Sure, but in separate dreams. I think I’d go crazy, if it weren’t for my job at Drum Inc.’

‘Drum Inc.! Rings a bell. Wait a minute. Yes, we’re investigating them right now. In connection with the disappearance of a South American republic. And-other things. Anne, do you think you could help us?’

Anne finished her drink without replying. When she looked up, their eye-beams locked, exchanging messages of involvement. ‘Let’s have the next drink at my place,’ she said.

‘… and I’m still not really
sure,’
Kravon finished. ‘I just know I’ve forgotten something. And don’t tell me I’ve forgotten God, because I haven’t.’

The grotesque bundle of clothing before the mirror put on a dog collar and threw a strait-jacket around its shoulder pads. Then it began tucking things in its belts, holsters, scabbards, bandoliers, obis and cincts: a sixgun, a sceptre, a crozier, a switchblade, a fasces, a roll, a sabre, a scout knife, a hanger, a rolling pin, grenades, a fuse, yarrow sticks, a flute, a splinter from the true cross, pencils with your name imprinted in
_14-kt
. gold, a fountain pen, a fountain pen which sprinkles holy water, a fountain pen which sprinkles teargas, a rectal thermometer, a syringe, a slide rule, Old Glory, a monstrance, a whip, a tampon, a coke, an electric toothbrush, an olive branch, carrots, a cigar, an umbrella, Keys to the Kingdom, silver bullets, an Ibis stick …

‘Father? What do you say?’

The face, invisible inside the hollow layers of space helmet, crash helmet, etc., may have moved; the figure may have spoken; but nothing came out.

‘God damn it, say something!
Say something
!’

Kravon leaped at him, tearing at the folds of brocade and khaki and nylon and leather. The overbalanced, swaying mass tipped back, collapsed softly on the carpet, cloth-to-cloth impact.

Snarling, Kravon tore away layer after layer, flinging aside an old school tie, a Nazi armband, a maniple.

‘Good God!’

The final transparency,
thought Travers.
The whole works, the jello girls, Kravon, the universe. They’re all completely insensible.

A little later they found Kravon on his hands and knees, still pawing over the pile of rags. After thumping and kicking him awhile, they estimated Kravon had a good ten years’ service left in him. But just to be sure, they would give him, as Dr Freag put it, ‘a change of heart’. The research team – Freag, Ortiz, Logan, Gibbel, Born and Stoneweg – was split into two groups. Freag’s group wanted to test a new surgery machine, while Born’s group wanted to see how many different organs from various donors could be stuffed into one skin and live. Now each team would begin the wearisome search for a donor. The first team to find one would get Kravon.

The company doctor had some objections. Who were they, non-medical men, to judge whether or not Kravon needed a new heart? In his opinion …

The two teams silenced him by threatening to do two heart transplant operations.

The pretty nurse did not have Ray fooled. He noticed the way she fussed around making his bed, taking far longer than with the other patients. Let her go on pretending to be all career and no heart, he knew better. Obviously she was enjoying feeding him his meals, he could tell by the loving way she spooned in every bite.

Okay, she never smiled or spoke to him, that was her way, maybe. Didn’t it prove all the more that she couldn’t trust herself to keep cool? Sure it did. And even the way she handled that bedpan …

Not that he really wanted to let himself go with her. There was always the outside chance of a mistake – then he’d find himself in a false position. He didn’t really trust her. Maybe she, too, would go off with Eric Bland. She was probably making a date with Eric right now, this minute!

Ray nudged the emergency light switch with his nose. If she didn’t come to answer it within, say, five minutes, he’d know something was up. She was off somewhere in the nurse’s lounge, screwing Eric Bland … letting Ray
die
, for all she knew.

He could see just how it might happen, too. He might accidentally bite the end off the bent glass straw in his glass of water on the side table. Then he might accidentally run his neck against the jagged edge, and cut the jugular vein or the carotid artery or something. Something pulsing.

‘Marilyn? He l …’

Bob rolled back and lit a cigarette. The front side of his body was tingling with information about Drum Inc., and he knew without asking that Anne felt the same about the CIA. Trying to make words of what he felt, he watched the script of smoke curl towards the acoustical ceiling. The words were garbled, but they were there: