Eating Memories (21 page)

“Please help me.”

The Russian hesitated.

“I can’t do it alone.”

“Yes, yes, all right,” the Russian said.

Robert bolted to the door, Yuri lagging behind. Outside the station, threads of fire snapped like whips through the dark.

Heads down, they ran the two hundred yards to the first of the cells. On the west side of the collector they came across the tom and desiccated body parts of a small herd of cows:

Where the energy had touched ground it had leached the earth, transforming it into a strange, powdery substance, pale and dead, like the inorganic stuff of the moon. On the west side the stanchions had sunk in a foot, parting the cells and leaving the metal armature exposed, to the satellite feed.

Robert smelled ozone. He could feel the electricity like a tingling itch in his bones. Pulling Yuri after him, he lowered himself to the hot ground and slid under the first row of cells, searching for the hydraulic levers.

“Here’s A-1,” he told the Russian. “Put your hands around it and pull at my order.”

On his hands and knees, he crawled up the line to B-1, groped and found the soft, insulated bar. “Up a quarter and stop!” he shouted.

There was a whir of motors. A crunch. The seared ground had given way. Not ten yards from Robert’s head the microwave energy hit the armature and arced again, sending a tonal buzz through his chest, cutting off his breath.

Gingerly, Robert reached out and touched the lever again. “Go! Go! Up another quarter!” he screamed. The engines strained. With a weary crunch the ground compacted more. Turning onto his side, he held desperately onto the lever, hoping that the energy wouldn’t find its connection into the insulated part of the armature.

Synthetic lightning rang on the metal. Yuri was howling something in Russian ‘that sounded suspiciously like a prayer.

“Up another quarter! Now!”

Robert’s hand cramped on the butt of the lever, and he found himself staring out into the field at the decapitated head of a bull, its brain case exploded and empty. Red powder was still leaking from its vacant eyes.

* * *

I must have slept a little bit or something, because when I open my eyes again there’s another fat-assed important white angel in the room. God doesn’t have any black angels, I’m noticing. When you get that big, you don’t have to worry about busing.

The new angel’s got a Russian uniform on, and he’s impersonating a general, too. He seems very, very worried, and he’s picking at a brass button on his coat.

The two big-deal angels are talking, talking in goddamned codes again.

Mama always understood the codes better than I did. She had a facility for language. But language acquisition is never handed down, and I had an extra problem with the speech because I was smart. It scares them when you’re smart, whether you’re black or whether you’re white.

SHUT YOUR SMART MOUTH, BOY.

DON’T GET SMART WITH ME.

See? You just don’t fit in with Southerners if you’re smart. That’s the one sin they’ll never forgive you for.

I glance over at the two angels and wonder how smart they are. No one’s looking my way.

“ . .. but we don’t know who.”

The Russian angel sits down heavily. He puts his head in his hands. Old Gabriel’s standing in front of him, a look of divine pity in his face.

“I’m sorry,” he tells the Russian. “And there’s something else. We’ve found extensive neurological damage.”

The angel with the blue epaulets on his uniform glances up. “In which one?”

“Both,”
“
Gabriel sighs.

* * *

The farmer who owned the dead cows was furious. “Containible damage?” Sutton asked, leaning both beefy forearms on the conference table. His face was as red as raw meat, and his blue eyes were staring with ironic disbelief at Colonel Gomez.

Robert darted a quick glance down the long, polished wood table. Gomez was tight-lipped.

“I lost eight good steers, Colonel,” Sutton said. Whatever goodwill the Southern farmer had had for the Air Force had apparently evaporated. “And it ruined a chunk of pasture. You been out there, Colonel? You seen that ground?”

Robert could sense Yuri shift his weight on the chair. After the incident, both of them had hidden the twelve empty beer cans, so Yuri knew where all the bodies were buried. Robert, his hands laced together on the table to his front, prayed hard to any god who would listen that the Russian wouldn’t talk.

Next to the furious cattleman who owned Zone 1 sat Miss Ida and Miss Minnealetha, who owned Zone 2. The sisters were perched on their chairs, attentive as well-trained children.

Any minute now Robert figured Yuri would spill his guts. The Russian had drunk a few beers of his own that night, but not enough to make any difference.

Captain Strickland was drunk,
Yuri was going to say
. I may be a tight-assed former Commie who thinks he likes jazz, but Captain Strickland, the smart-assed black person, who very much understands the blues, was the one who screwed up.

Then all the white people around the table would turn to stare at him.

Sutton, who wasn’t very smart, raved on. Robert wished the farmer would shut up. A headache had sprung up in back of Robert’s right eye. He unlaced his fingers and rubbed a spot on his forehead.

“You seen those cattle, huh, Colonel? Exploded into shit and steaks—” Sutton stopped dead, as if he had just remembered the sisters were there and said, “Pardon my French,” in an abashed tone.

Smiling, the two old ladies nodded.

“The microwave energy excites molecules, Mr. Sutton,” the colonel explained. “If you ladies will excuse my being graphic, the blood literally boils. And it boils in the contained environment of the skin. The same thing would happen were you to stick a rat in a microwave oven.”

“Nothing’s gonna ever grow in that pasture,” Sutton said.

“That is absolutely right. The ground has lost its ability to retain water, Mr. Sutton. Rain will roll right off it. Which is why the government is making restitution to you.” The colonel had repeated the ruined-pasture/government-money equation several times that afternoon, and he sounded like a man who hated to repeat himself.

“That ain’t enough. Listen. You told us this was just like an electric station, but you were lying. You got a weapon out there, Colonel.”

The colonel sighed. “Yes. It could be used as a weapon. Hence Major Yeremin’s presence as a U.N. Observer. We have a failure probability of 0.0001 percent, but accidents can happen. Tell me, though, Mr. Sutton, which would you prefer, a small accident such as this one which involves only a few square yards of damage, or a coal-powered electrical plant which can damage the environment for hundreds of miles around?”

“To hell with the environment! I want that thing out of my goldurned pasture.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sutton. You and the two ladies have signed a ninety-nine-year lease.”

Robert put his hand over his eye. Flashes were going off in his peripheral vision again. Blink-blinkblinkblink-blink. He had never learned Morse, so he wasn’t sure what it meant.

“Well, why the hell did it happen, anyway?” Sutton’s shout filled the room.

“A gyroscopic stabilization failure of the satellite itself. We think. We’re sending the shuttle up to take a look and make sure.”

“Well, maybe the Russian done it!”

Robert was close enough to Yuri to feel the startled jerk of his shoulders.

He’s going to talk,
Robert thought.
Any second he’s going to talk to save his own skin. Oh, yes, indeed. The colonel already wonders why I couldn’t get the satellite under control sooner. I can see the question in his eyes. Gomez’s covering my ass, but when Yuri talks, the jig’s up. And they’ll have this jigaboo dancing the brain-death jig to the Home In Alabama blues at the end of a borrowed rope.

The colonel’ s words emerged hard and definitive as little steel pellets. “Major Yeremin cannot get into the main computer program, the one that adjusts the satellite feed. The computer recognizes Captain Strickland’s unique touch on the keys. It would be impossible—”

Sutton half-rose from his chair. His face was purplish red as if microwave energy had hit him and he was about to explode dried brain matter onto the polished table. “You leave something like that in the hands of a damned foreigner and a nigger captain?”

Whack. The Colonel brought his open palm down on the table. He jumped to his feet. “Captain Strickland has a doctorate in electrical engineering, Mr. Sutton. He knows more about this system than all but four other people in the United States. And at great personal risk, he went out and hand-calibrated those cells, something I imagine you wouldn’t have the guts to do. He saved your white ass, Mr. Sutton.” The Colonel’s lips twisted into a sneer. “And your red neck.”

In the tense silence Miss Ida’s voice was sweet and unexpected as a perfect C-major chord at the end of a dissonant symphony. “Mr. Sutton?”

“Ma’am?”

“You Know Minnealetha spent a good two hours making those pecan and molasses cookies for you, and you haven’t even touched them.”

The men stared at her.

“My, I’d just love me one of those cookies and a cup of that good coffee you make, Colonel. Would you be so kind as to put a pot on?”

Neither woman’s smile had dimmed.

After a pause the colonel turned on his heel and walked over to the coffee pot.

That afternoon when Yuri and Robert got back to the station, the Russian said, “The old ladies are crazy. They talk of cookies.”

Robert’s head throbbed; his eyes wouldn’t focus. “They wanted everybody to shut up.”

“Then why don’t they just tell them to?”

Robert ran the security program. Numbers danced across the screen as if he were reading them above a car hood at noon on a summer’s day. “They speak in code. All white people do. The only language I ever learned was the language of the elephant.”

“I am afraid of this man, Sutton. I was once a Communist; you are black. Will they put us on a cross and burn us?”

“Yes,” Robert said. “It’s all gone too far.”

Yuri sounded frantic. “Let us call someone and tell them of what is happening. Won’t anyone help us?”

“They wouldn’t understand us when we speak.”

“Listen, Robert. I think the ladies come in here and leave something to interfere with the program’.” The Russian was tearing the cushions off the sofa. “I think they caused this accident so that it can be blamed on us.”

Robert watched his frantic search for a while. “You know what I think?”

“I do not care what you think.”

“I think you may be the problem,” Robert said.

Yuri’s hands froze on a pillow. He inched away.

“You were at the terminal when I came out,” Robert said. “Maybe you moved the satellite.”

“It was a micrometeorite or perhaps a misfiring of the stabilization jets. Do not blame me for shoddy American engineering.” Yuri’s eyes shifted nervously towards the door.

Robert saw the movement of the Russian’s eyes and very carefully put his foot between Yuri and possible escape. “Maybe you slipped something in my beer. Yeah. That’s it. You slipped something in my beer so I’d sleep.”

The Russian’s laugh was skittish. His face was very pale, even paler than a white man’s should be. “Why would I wish to do that?”

“So they’d blame a black man.”

Yuri laughed again. “This is crazy. I have nothing against black people. Besides, I cannot get into the program. Your idiotic government has decided that only you can. We did not correct the error quickly because you were drunk. You may feel guilt, but do not expect me to indulge in it with you.”

Putting a hand to his forehead, Robert winced. The pain was very bad. “Forget it. Just forget I ever said anything.”

“Yes. We get angry at each other. That is to be expected. It would be best to forget, it.” Putting his hands in his pockets, Yuri sauntered back down the hall, casting a glance, behind him as he went. He walked into Robert’s room.

In a few minutes he came out and Robert could see discomfort in his face. But there was ironic vindication there, too. If a paranoid lives long enough, he’ll find out one day he’s right.

Robert slipped the automatic from under his thigh and held it where Yuri could see it.

“I haven’t made up my mind about you, Yuri. Whether you’re a real white man or not, I mean. What do you think about that?”

“I think your military wishes to kill me,’” Yuri said. “I think that there is no place now that I can run. I think all this time you have hated me because I was once a Communist.”

Robert laughed. “You may be right.”

* * *

“Both of them?” the angel dressed like a Russian general’s asking. I’m thinking that if he keeps worrying at his button that way, he’s going to pull it off. “Neurological, damage in both of them?”

“Yes,” Gabriel himself says. “And it’s too bad. There was damage apparently dating from the first arcing incident. There’s no way of telling who was guilty, but whichever one it was, it’s important for us to remember that they both were heroes once. It’s very important to remember that it was because of that heroism they became sick. They weren’t responsible for what happened later.”

“Have I told you how I regret this?” whispers the Russian angel.

“Everyone regrets it.”

“There is the official word, of course. And also the dismay of the environmentalists at losing their one hope. But I wanted you to know of my personal feelings. God, I am so sorry.”

God.

Me, myself, Captain Robert Strickland, black boy wonder from MIT. I’m more powerful than God.

Listen very carefully, children.

For a time I made God dance on the tips of my fingers.

* * *

The pickup was back. Every night it came back.

Yuri watched for It. Every time he saw it in the camera, Yuri would call Robert to come, and Robert, looking in the television screen, would see the blurry
black and white image of the truck lying in wait outside on the dark road.

It was a big flare-fendered pickup with a roll bar and gator-gigging lights. Coon-hunting lights. To the side of it, on the concrete gate barrier, he could read the spray-painted words they had left on the first night of their vigil. The white men weren’t communicating in codes any more.