IGMS Issue 8 (14 page)

"You seem so confident about this," the woman said. "I've been having nightmares ever since that something or other collapsed."

"The Larsen B," the little man said. His honey-smooth voice sent a chill through Jacob.

"So you believe this will lead us to a new age of reason?" the woman asked. "A new Enlightenment?"

"Change is good," he said, taking a sip from his drink. His cheeks bellowed around the straw like a puff adder. "We've become too complacent. Even about violence. We crave it. Knowing that others are dying makes us feel more alive. It's the fear of it all. We need a world-wide threat like this to really make us sit up and take notice."

Same old sleight of hand, Jacob thought. Keep your eyes on the rising tide as I slip away with your soul.

"But what about the war?" she asked.

"Wars come and go," he said. The little man was really getting full of himself now. "They're inconsequential in the scheme of things. They kill off some of us. We kill off a lot more of them. Our God's happy. Their god's happy. Everyone gets the requisite sacrifice of souls. At the end of the day the Earth has completed another rotation and we're one step closer to a new day. Nothing can stop it."

The woman slurped her drink. "Talking to you has made me feel so reassured," she said.

I'm going to vomit, Jacob thought.

The wiry man smiled. "You know you have remarkable green eyes."

Jacob sprang to his feet, attracting their attention. "They're not green," he said, "They're blue," and walked out of the bar, the wiry man's smile burning into his back.

Bad news on the television. Scientists discovered serious cracks in another Antarctic shelf. They now fear there could be some kind of sub-geophysical continental shift or some crap like that. The Earth was melting. Jacob couldn't be bothered, preoccupied as he was by other things, death primarily. Two days ago he'd have welcomed it with open arms. Now he felt differently. Maybe it was the idea of death on somebody else's terms. Jacob wasn't sure. He stayed up all night watching the apocalyptic news and cleaning his two guns.

At five a.m. the phone rang. Jacob let it ring three times before answering.

"This is ridiculous," the wiry man said. "Let's have dinner tonight."

"I didn't think this was a social visit," Jacob said.

"What else would it be?"

Jacob didn't answer.

"Come on," the man said. "You'll be saving me from another evening with that moaning cow."

"I thought suffering was your business."

The little man laughed. "Shall we say seven o'clock?"

The hotel's restaurant suffered from an over adornment of palm trees and bubbling fountains, so much so that it became difficult to determine where the inside stopped and the outside began. The hostess led Jacob to a table by the tropical buffet, but Jacob redirected her to an empty table for two by the French doors. He lit a cigarette and ordered a Manhattan. The holstered gun jabbed his ribs.

The man appeared wearing his linen suit and sneakers. He walked swiftly, in spite of a pronounced limp, and his eyes lit up when he saw Jacob.

"Forgive my attire," he said, offering his hand. "I keep leaving a note for the valet to have my suits cleaned, but the bastard never takes them."

Jacob shook the man's hand. It felt cold, the skin dry and rough. He wore makeup to obscure the ancient lines in his face and his dark eyes were red-rimmed and yellowing, as if damaged by sights no mortal man could comprehend. They betrayed his origins from a place so buried beneath the Earth's mantle that it defied human comprehension. Hell remained a feeble concept, even for those fallen few trying to scrabble their way out.

"So what do they call you now?"

"I've been trying Nigel on for size," he said. "I make a good Englishman, don't you think?"

"Your accent stinks."

A waiter appeared at the table with one of the hotel's parasoled concoctions. Nigel had never ordered it but then there was no need. He had a way of making people do things without their realizing it. He took one of Jacob's cigarettes, lit it, and erupted into a coughing fit.

"Smoking's bad for you," Jacob said. He rattled the ice cubes in his empty glass. "Think you could work your magic and get me another one of these?"

Nigel's brow wrinkled and the waiter returned with another Manhattan.

"Cheers," Jacob said. "Now tell me why you're here."

"We live in a world taken over by the young, Jacob," Nigel said, as he examined the back of his hands, an annoying habit Jacob had forgotten about. "People don't value their elders in this society. They'd rather pack us off to a nursing home." He narrowed his eyes at Jacob. "Or ship us off to die on some Caribbean island."

"Worse things happen."

Nigel took another drag and let the smoke roll out of his mouth. "The problem is that this younger generation is callous. Killing is sport for them. Years of mental decay brought on by video games, I suppose. They see it as their God given right to inflict pain on the world. Morality died years ago. You need to have a taste for killing innocents now."

"Morality's a joke," Jacob said.

"Perhaps, but we had a moral code in those days. We thought of ourselves as the good guys."

Jacob laughed. "There are no good guys or bad guys, just different points of view. We were soldiers fighting a war. I fully expect God to forsake me."

"You don't believe that?"

Jacob glared at Nigel. "Tell me why you're here."

"You know why I'm here."

"Then get it over with."

"It's not that easy."

Jacob stared out the French doors, watching the darkened sea shove layers of foam onto the beach. "You should have let me die."

"And lose a good man? Besides, you begged me."

"I was scared."

"You're scared now."

Jacob stared back at Nigel. "Are you offering me a deal?"

"Just something that alters the bargain a bit. You consider coming back into the fold. That way you'll relieve me of the need to kill you."

"Assuming you'd be successful."

Nigel grinned.

Jacob looked back at the sea. "I'll think about it," he said.

The waiter brought a plate of blackened tilapia to Nigel and handed Jacob the bill. Apparently, their meeting was over.

"You have until tomorrow morning," Nigel said.

Jacob threw the bill on the table and walked out of the restaurant.

Scientists predicted Bourbon Street would be under two feet of water in a year's time. The President's newly appointed Head of Environmental Studies denounced such rash predictions. He went on to say that other studies, funded by the government, would prove these conclusions to be the stuff of tabloid journalism. Besides, the engineering effort to save New Orleans would be astronomically expensive, somewhere in the trillions and the state of Louisiana couldn't afford it. N'awlins itself couldn't be reached for comment, as it contended with revelers packing the streets in what was being called Mardi's Last Hurrah.

Jacob should have died at least twice now. The first time was back in '43 when he'd been ambushed by a German sniper and Nigel or whatever he'd called himself back then had conjured a little magic to save Jacob from the ultimate fate. The second time, by Jacob's calculations, should have been 1998. Using the average age of his parent's demises, and accounting for advances in medicine, that was the year he should have died of natural causes. He would have been seventy-five. He certainly had no right to be breathing in the year 2010. He wondered if Earth felt the same way.

Jacob walked into town where he found a local bar to drown his thoughts. Drinking in morbid silence, he considered Nigel's offer, as locals and a few brave tourists coupled and uncoupled to the mandates of cheap rum and scratchy reggae. The bourbon soon turned Jacob's mind into a bleary haze. A young woman with black hair and black eyes sat next to him and they talked a while about God-knows-what. Jacob guessed she was a prostitute and he considered financing some sex in the hope it might make him feel more human, but when the time came he couldn't pull the trigger, so he stumbled back to the hotel alone.

He pushed his cardkey into the door-lock and the light went green. Please enter. The room smelled of smoke and fear. He showered in water as hot as he could bear, and then fell onto the sofa to watch TV - some talent show in Portuguese. Soon he passed into the world of nightmares. He stumbled through the burning landscape of Indo-China, smelling of sweat and cowardice, and came across a series of heads minus their bodies, each black-haired and too young, and dropped haphazardly along the dusty ground. They pleaded with Jacob as he walked amongst them. In real life, they'd cried soundlessly and for only a few tormenting seconds, but in the dream they chattered endlessly in sing-song voices. "It's the end time," they cried. "Come join us."

Shadows shifted in the room and Jacob woke with a start. The television and lights had been extinguished. Chill night air entered through the open balcony door. He reached under the cushion for the gun. It wasn't there.

Jacob searched the darkness, but nothing showed itself. The odor of fear clung to the air, as if it had followed him back from the dream. He'd made it easy, hadn't he? He'd left himself exposed and perhaps that's what he'd wanted. Perhaps he was no longer man enough to control his destiny. He wanted to die. He wanted it all to stop.

"Go ahead and shoot me," he shouted at the shadows, but the shadows didn't answer. His head pounded. He leaned forward and the room shifted angrily. Walking was out of the question. He slid off the couch and onto the floor. Something thin and metallic - a trip wire his mind screamed - caught against his knee.

Blue flame shocked the room. Jacob dove under the desk busting his shoulder on one of the metal legs. The lights flashed back on, as did the television at obscene volume, some big-breasted diva singing an old disco song in heavily accented English. Jacob struggled to his feet. Duct-taped to the top of the television was a smoking clown gun. A flag stuck out of its barrel.

It read, "Bang, bang. You're dead."

"So what's the deal?" Jacob asked, lighting a cigarette. He had a wicked hangover, like somebody playing racquetball against the backs of his eyes. Nigel sat across from him at a marble table next to the busy shuffleboard court. The slide and click clack of the discs provided a back drop. Above them the sun blazed and the palm trees conceded to the Caribbean winds.