Raising Stony Mayhall (34 page)

They regarded each other for a long moment. They’d talked many times via email, but they hadn’t seen each other in person since the congress, twenty-one years ago.

Mr. Blunt looked him over. Of course Stony wasn’t pretty to look at, either. His skin was crisscrossed with thick stitches. The holes in his head, front and back, had been sealed with
hard plastic and stitched closed by the Commander’s doctors, but he was conscious that the skin tone did not match, and that his forehead bore a slight indentation like an intimation of a third eye.

“You’re leaking,” Mr. Blunt said.

Stony laughed, stretched out his arms, or rather one arm and one stump. Water seeped from seams in his skin. “I’d hug you …”

“Quite all right,” Blunt said. “Perhaps you’d like to put on some clothes?”

Stony wore only a pair of torn khaki shorts. He shrugged, then nodded at a red-tiled roof several hundred yards down the beach, just visible behind the dunes. “My hut’s over there.”

“Oh, I know,” Mr. Blunt said. “I met Chip, your guard dog.”

“You didn’t hurt him, did you?”

“Of course not. He was very helpful.”

They walked along the white sand, skirting the incoming waves. Half a mile in the distance was the Commander’s estate, a white palace perched on a cliff that jutted into the ocean. The water was brilliant blue, the sky clear but for a few clouds that would carry the afternoon rain to them.

“So this is heaven,” Mr. Blunt said.

“The closest we’ll get to an afterlife,” Stony said. “The trip went okay, then? You’re here three hours early.”

“The Commander’s people were very efficient,” he said. “Though I suppose that’s largely your doing.”

Stony shrugged. “And Calhoun’s money. Thank you for coming.”

“You know I prefer to stay in the field.”

“You have to come in from the cold sometime,” Stony said.

They climbed a set of wooden stairs to a long, unfinished
beach house. The walls were unpainted, and one corner was a rectangle of bare studs covered by flapping plastic. Chip sat cross-legged on the patio, naked except for a web of hemp netting spread across his lap. “Cool, you found him!” he said.

“I did indeed,” Mr. Blunt said. “Thank you for the directions.”

“No problem,” Chip said. He was a very pretty dead man, blond with full lips, his body unscarred but for the half-moon of a deep bite on his shoulder. He’d been trying to finish the hammock for days now, but the knots kept confusing him.

“Did anybody call?” Stony asked him.

Chip thought hard. The conversion had hit Harry Vincent hard. After the fever passed he didn’t recognize his own name and had no idea where he was or what had happened to him. His new mind remained as sunny and empty as this beach.

“Never mind,” Stony said. “I’m sure voicemail picked it up.”

“Oh yeah,” Chip said. “Sure.” He turned his attention back to the ropes on his lap. Stony let Mr. Blunt into the house and closed the door behind them.

“How do you stand it?” Blunt asked. “Keeping him around like that?”

“Stop it,” Stony said. “He’s got nowhere else to go.”

“You’re a better man than I.” He looked around at the front room. “Though not much of a decorator.”

The inside of the house was more incomplete than the outside: bare drywall, some walls open to the plumbing, wiring taped to the wood. Stony had been meaning to finish, but dozens of other projects had distracted him. Every flat surface was covered by books, magazines, blueprints, and printouts. A long drafting table, stacked high with drawings and engineering manuals, braced one wall. The glass top of
the dining room table was crowded with equipment: two computers, a printer, a scanner, several flat-panel monitors. A tangle of blue and black cables connected them to the power and to a huge Océ 7055 blueprint printer squatting in front of one of the windows. Vertical tubes of rolled blueprints made an arsenal of one corner.

“It’s a look,” Stony said.

“You do it all from here?” Mr. Blunt asked.

“The communication stuff? No, no. There’s a real data center at the Commander’s place, with a bunch of smart people. This is just for … my projects. I’m going to get dressed. Make yourself at home.”

Stony was nearly dry from the walk back, but he could still feel the water sloshing under his skin, and he’d be weeping salt water for the rest of the day. Coming apart at the seams, he thought. His body was wearing out, the damages adding up. When he was younger he would have ignored injuries that he now worried over, and that worry kept the wounds from closing. Maybe that was the secret of youth: willful ignorance.

But not all wounds were forgotten. He ran his fingers across the place where his heart should be and found the stitches. There. The place where Kwang had shot him, where Alice and his mother had sewn him back together. He was still himself. Still Wanda Mayhall’s boy.

He stripped off his damp shorts, then pulled on an identical pair from a pile on the floor. The bedroom was more of a disaster than the front rooms. Stony should probably do a little house cleaning, he thought. Or at least allow the maid to come in.

He picked up his prosthetic arm from its spot on top of the dresser, pressed it to his stump, and wiggled the fingers to
make sure he had a grip on it. Then he pulled on a white bamboo shirt and returned to the dining room, where Mr. Blunt had unfolded a map.

“Is this Deadtown?” Blunt asked.

“It’s nothing.” Stony took the map from him and began to fold it.

“It looks like you’re planning an attack,” Mr. Blunt said. “You’re not going back there, are you?”

“It’s a pipe dream,” Stony said. “I know how to get in. I just can’t figure out how to get them all out without everyone being shot.”

“I noticed the names,” Blunt said. Taped to the wall were over a hundred index cards, grouped into three sections that roughly represented the cell blocks. Each card bore the name of a prisoner still in Deadtown when Stony had escaped. No one knew whether they were still alive. “You can’t save everyone, Stony.”

No, Stony thought, just me.

Mr. Blunt gestured at the other stacks of paper. “The rest of this—I suppose these are the reports you make us all fill out?”

“Some of it’s my own writing,” he said. “A few papers for the OSWoG journal, that kind of thing. But the reports are important. If we don’t keep track—”

“Your own writing? You realize your newsletters are already turning into scripture.”

Stony picked up a printout of a spreadsheet with the latest figures. “It’s not good. In ’88 we had seventeen hundred in the census. We’re down to less than three hundred people who are still in contact, not counting Deadtown prisoners. Almost fifty of those live here.”

“Three hundred?” Mr. Blunt seemed surprised. “I knew it
was low, but …” He skimmed the sheet. “The civil war has cost us perhaps thirty people, tops. And thanks to you we haven’t lost a house in years.”

“Not to the Diggers, no.” Mr. Blunt frowned, and Stony said, “Sleepers and suicides. One of our houses in Rochester went silent because all five people in the house decided to go to sleep together. The police found them before I could send someone to check on them.”

“You can’t be blaming yourself for this,” Mr. Blunt said. Stony didn’t answer, and Mr. Blunt said, “Most of those people are alive only because of the work you did in Deadtown, and what you’re doing now. They follow you, Stony, because they believe in you.” He smiled. “And because you have magical powers.”

“Don’t I know it. They send me
prayers
, Mr. Blunt. They ask me to do all sorts of impossible things. I got an email from a woman asking me to please stop their basement from flooding.”

“Can you blame them?” Blunt asked. “Ever since the Release—” Blunt raised a wooden hand, put a pistol finger to his forehead, and let the thumb clack down like a hammer. “When
that
got around, my boy, the proles got very excited. The Lump is our John the Baptist—and not just because he’d do fine as just a head on a plate—and you, my friend, are—”

“Stop it.” Stony didn’t want to hear the word.

Blunt shrugged. “Most of our people are anxious to do whatever you say.”

“But they’re not listening. I ask them to hang on, but they’re checking out, Mr. Blunt. We’re on the edge of extinction.”

Blunt walked to the window, looked out at the sea. “There must be others, living off the grid.”

“Sure,” Stony said. “But we can’t find them. The ones who do talk to us are growing desperate. Every day I get messages asking me when the bite will start.”

Mr. Blunt slowly looked back over his shoulder. “Messages from biters. Do you know where they are coming from?”

“Yes, I do.”

“But you haven’t sent them to me.”

“No.”

Mr. Blunt turned and smiled. “I wondered why you called me here. You’ve lost faith in the mission.”

“You’ve saved the world a dozen times over,” Stony said. “If it wasn’t for you—”

“No, if it wasn’t for
us
. You, me, Delia. It’s you who have ferreted out most of the Big Biters. My team and I are merely soldiers. The deliverymen.”

“I know the blood’s on my hands,” Stony said. “I think about that every day.”

“And
now
it’s bothering you.”

“The killings have to stop, Mr. Blunt.”

“Done.”

Stony was surprised. “I … wasn’t sure you’d—”

“You think I’ve
enjoyed
my work?”

“No, of course not. But I thought—”

“In thirty years I’ve arranged the destruction of forty-one LDs. I’ve personally assassinated twelve of them. No one should be asked to do such a thing.”

“I know you didn’t ask for the job. But I thought you, well …”

“Believed? I did once. But lately, lately …” He shook his head. “The irrationality of my position has become more difficult to reconcile. How many LDs must I kill to save them?”
He removed a thick three-ring binder from one of the wicker chairs by the window and sat down, crossing his legs. Stony remembered the night he met Mr. Blunt, how surprised he’d been to see a man made of so much wood.

“Three hundred,” Mr. Blunt said. He sounded tired.

“Not counting the hundred and nineteen in Deadtown.”

Blunt removed his homburg and held it on his lap. “Have you ever considered … just letting us fade away?”

“I think about it all the time,” Stony said.

“Really.” Mr. Blunt’s charred face could barely express emotion, but his voice communicated his surprise.

“The world would be safer with us gone,” Stony said.

“The
living
would be safer.”

“The living
are
the world. They breed. They evolve. We just exist.”

“Oh my,” Mr. Blunt said. “Envying the breeders? You’ve become a self-hating zombie, Stony. Is this some kind of mid-death crisis?”

Stony smiled. “Maybe.”

“Which reminds me, how is your mother?”

“Still in prison. Ever since the Accountants busted Dr. Weiss, they’ve made her even more inaccessible—Calhoun’s lawyers can’t get to her, can’t even get the government to acknowledge that they have her. She’s still a terrorist.”

“I’m so sorry. But your sisters, Crystal and Alice, and your friend Kwang—they used to write to you all the time. Still keep in touch?”

“I promised myself I’d never see any of them again. It’s too dangerous for them. Besides, I’m supposed to be incinerated.” Mr. Blunt either didn’t realize or chose to ignore the fact that Stony hadn’t answered the question. He sent emails to Alice at least once a month, through various anonymizer
services, always using a different account. It was the smartest way he knew to do such a stupid thing. “I try to keep track of them from afar,” Stony said.

“It’s only natural,” Blunt said. “Crystal’s daughter, what was her name?”

“Ruby.”

“Ruby! She must be what, eighteen by now?”

“Twenty-one. She’s graduating from college next year.”

“They grow up so fast. And you haven’t even talked to her, not once?”

“You’re interrogating, Blunt. Don’t worry, I’m not risking our security.”

“You misunderstand me. I think it would be a mistake to
not
contact them. If I had family, I would want to see them, now, before the Diggers burn us all.”

“I’m not going to let that happen,” Stony said. “
We’re
not going to let that happen.”

Mr. Blunt regarded him. Against the bright window he was nearly a silhouette. “So,” he said finally, “you’re going to let it happen. The Big Bite is here at last. Even the Lumpists will be relieved.”

“No,” Stony said firmly. “Not the bite. We’re going with Calhoun’s plan.”

“Calhoun is insane.”

“Maybe. But the idea isn’t. At least, it’s the least insane option we have right now.”

“Have you talked to Delia about this?”

“Delia is onboard,” Stony said. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. Delia had serious doubts, but she said that she’d follow him.

Blunt uncrossed his legs, straightened the crease at his knees, then crossed the other leg. “I see.”

“She wanted to be here for this conversation, but she’s on
her way to contact the leadership in person. I’ll be joining her as soon as I can.”

“You realize we could all be destroyed.”

“Maybe. I don’t see any other choice.”

Mr. Blunt stared into the middle distance. After a time he said, “Okay then.” He looked up. “What day is the coming-out party?”

“We have eleven months to lay the groundwork,” Stony said. “We go public on June first next year.” He smiled. “We’re calling it D-day.”

“Of course you are.”

“I also have a new job for you—one that doesn’t involve killing.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’ve got to meet some people on the other side of the island,” Stony said. “Let’s talk about it on the way. Wanna see the spaceport?”

They walked out to a narrow paved road, where a yellow golf cart was parked beneath a palm tree, guarded by a trio of wild chickens. “The place is overrun with them,” Stony said. They shooed the chickens away and got into the cart. “Usually I walk everywhere, but since you’re a guest …” The island was only seven miles long and two and a half miles wide at its widest point; it was often faster to walk over the ridge than follow the switchbacks in the road. The undergrowth could get dense, but at least the mosquitoes didn’t bother with the dead. “Hang on,” Stony said, and punched the start button.