The Heaven Makers (16 page)

Chapter 18

Thurlow awoke at the first click of the alarm clock, turned it off before it rang. He sat up in bed, fighting a deep reluctance to face this day. It’d be hellish at the hospital, he knew. Whelye was putting on the pressure and would keep it up until… Thurlow took a deep sighing breath. When it got bad enough, he knew he’d quit.

The community was helping him to this decision—crank letters, vicious phone calls. He was a pariah.

The professionals were an odd contrast—Paret and old Judge Victor Venning Grimm among them. What they did in court and what they did outside of court appeared to be held in separate, carefully insulated compartments.

“It’ll blow over,” Grimm had said. “Give it time.”

And Paret: “Well, Andy, you win some, you lose some.”

Thurlow wondered if they had any but detached emotions about Murphey’s death. Paret had been invited to the execution, and the courthouse grapevine had said he debated going. Good sense had prevailed, though. His advisors had warned against his appearing vindictive.

Why did I go? Thurlow asked himself. Did I want to extract the last measure of personal pain from this?

But he knew why he’d gone, meekly accepting the condemned man’s wry invitation to “Watch me die.” It’d been the lure of his own personal hallucination: Would the watchers be there, too, in their hovering craft?

They… or the illusion had been there.

Are they real? Are they real? his mind pleaded. Then: Ruth, where are you? He felt that if she could only return with a reasonable explanation for her disappearance, the hallucinations would go.

His thoughts veered back to the execution. It would take more than one long weekend to erase that memory. Recollection of the sounds bothered him—the clang of metal against metal, the whisper-shuffling of feet as the guards came into the execution area with Murphey.

The memory of the condemned man’s glazed eyes lay across Thurlow’s vision. Murphey had lost some of his dumpiness. The prison suit hung slackly on him. He walked with a heavy, dragging limp. Ahead of him walked a black-robed priest chanting in a sonorous voice that concealed an underlying whine.

In his mind, Thurlow watched them pass, feeling all the spectators caught up abruptly in a spasm of silence. Every eye turned then to the executioner. He looked like a drygoods clerk, tall, bland-faced, efficient—standing there beside the rubber-sealed door into the little green room with its eyeless portholes.

The executioner took one of Murphey’s arms, helped him over the hatch sill. One guard and the priest followed. Thurlow was in a line to look directly through the hatchway and hear their conversation.

The guard passed a strap over Murphey’s left arm, told him to sit farther back in the chair. “Put your hand here, Joe. A little farther this way.” The guard cinched the strap. “Does that strap hurt?”

Murphey shook his head. His eyes remained glazed, a trapped animal look in them.

The executioner looked at the guard, said: “Al, why don’t you stay in here and hold his hand?”

In that instant, Murphey came out of the depths to shatter Thurlow, forcing him to turn away. “You best stay with the mules and wagon,” Murphey said.

It was a phrase Thurlow had heard Ruth use… many times, one of those odd family expressions that meant something special to the inner circle of intimates. Hearing Murphey use it then had forged a link between father and daughter that nothing could break.

All else was anticlimax.

Remembering that moment, Thurlow sighed, swung his feet out of the bed onto the cold floor. He pulled on his slippers, donned a robe and crossed to the window. There, he stood staring at the view which had brought his father to buy this house twenty-five years before.

The morning light hurt his eyes and they began to water. Thurlow took up his dark glasses from the bedstand, slipped them on, lightened the setting to just below the pain threshold.

The valley had its usual morning overcast, the redwood fog that would burn off sometime around eleven. Two ravens sat perched in the branches of a live oak below him calling to unseen companions. A drop of condensation spilled from an acacia leaf directly beneath the window.

Beyond the tree there was motion. Thurlow turned toward it, saw a cigar-shaped object about thirty feet long lift into view. It drifted across the top of the oak, scattering the ravens. They flapped away, croaking with harsh dissonance.

They see it! Thurlow told himself. It’s real!

Abruptly, the thing launched itself across the sky to his left, lanced into the overcast. Behind it came a covey of spheres and discs.

All were swallowed by the clouds.

Into the shocked stillness with which Thurlow enveloped himself there came a rasping voice: “You are the native, Thurlow.”

Thurlow whirled to see an apparition in his bedroom doorway—a squat, bowlegged figure in a green cape and leotards, square face, dark hair, silvery skin, a wide gash of mouth. The creature’s eyes burned feverishly under pronounced brows.

The mouth moved, and again came that harsh, resonant voice: “I am Kelexel.” The English was clear, clipped.

Thurlow stared. A dwarf? he asked himself. A lunatic? He found his mind jammed with questions.

Kelexel glanced out the window behind Thurlow. It had been faintly amusing to watch Fraffin’s pack go hounding after the empty needleship. The programmed automatic course couldn’t elude the pursuers forever, of course, but by the time they caught it, all would have been accomplished here. There’d be no bringing back the dead.

Fraffin would have to face that… and his crime.

Resurgent pride firmed Kelexel’s will. He frowned at Thurlow, thinking: I know my duty. Ruth would waken soon, he knew, and come to their voices. When she did, she could watch a supreme triumph. She’ll be proud that a Chem smiled upon her, he thought.

“I have watched you, witch doctor,” Kelexel said.

A thought flickered through Thurlow’s mind: Is this some weird psychotic come to kill me because of my testimony?

“How did you get into my house?” Thurlow demanded.

“For a Chem it was simplicity,” Kelexel said.

Thurlow had the sudden nightmare feeling that this creature might be connected with the objects that had flown into the clouds, with the watchers who… What is a Chem? he wondered.

“How have you watched me?” Thurlow asked.

“Your antics have been captured in… in a…” Kelexel waved a knob-knuckled hand in exasperation. It was so difficult to communicate with these creatures. “… in a thing like your movies,” he concluded. “It’s much more, of course—a sensation transcript that works directly on the audience by empathic stimulation.”

Thurlow cleared his throat. The words made only the vaguest sense, but his feelings of disquiet increased. His voice came out hoarsely: “Something new, no doubt.”

“New?” Kelexel chuckled. “Older than your galaxy.”

He must be a crank, Thurlow reassured himself. Why do they always pick on psychologists?

But he remembered the ravens. No blandishment of logic could erase the fact that the ravens had seen these… things too. Again, he asked himself: What is a Chem?

“You don’t believe me,” Kelexel said. “You don’t want to believe me.” He could feel relaxation seep through his body like a warm drink. Ahh, this was amusing. He saw the fascination Fraffin’s people must have known once intimidating these creatures. The anger and jealousy he had directed against Thurlow began to dissipate.

Thurlow swallowed. His reason directed him into outrageous channels of thought. “If I believed you,” he said, “I’d have to infer you were… well, some kind of…”

“Someone from another world?”

“Yes.”

Kelexel laughed. “The things I could do! I could frighten you into a stupor like that!” He snapped his fingers.

It was a solidly human gesture from this inhuman looking person. Thurlow saw it and took a deep breath. He gave a closer examination to his caller’s clothes: the cape, the leotards. He looked at the oddly high-positioned ears. The cape could’ve come from a theatrical outfitter, he thought. He looks like a dwarf Bela Lugosi. Can’t be over four feet tall.

A near panic fear of his visitor shot through Thurlow then. “Why’re you here?” he demanded.

Why am I here? For a moment no logical reason came to Kelexel’s mind. He thought of Ruth unconscious on the tagalong in the other room. This Thurlow might’ve been her mate. A pang of jealousy gripped Kelexel.

“Perhaps I came to put you in your place,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll take you to my ship far above your silly planet and show you what an unimportant speck it is.”

I must humor him, Thurlow thought. He said: “Let’s grant this isn’t a joke in bad taste and you’re…”

“You don’t tell a Chem he has bad taste,” Kelexel said.

Thurlow heard the violence in Kelexel’s voice. By an effort of conscious will, he paced his breathing to an even rhythm, stared at the intruder. Could this be the reason Ruth is gone? he wondered. Is this one of the creatures who took her, who’ve been spying on me, who watched poor Joe Murphey die, who…

“I’ve broken the most important laws of my society to come here,” Kelexel said. “It astonishes me what I’ve done.”

Thurlow took off his glasses, found a handkerchief on his dresser, polished the lenses, returned them to his nose. I must keep him talking, he thought. As long as he continues to talk, he’s venting his violence.

“What is a Chem?” Thurlow asked.

“Good,” Kelexel said. “You have normal curiosity.” He began to explain the Chem in broad outline, their power, their immortality, their storyships.

Still no mention of Ruth. Thurlow wondered if he dared ask about her.

“Why have you come to me?” he asked. “What if I told about you?”

“Perhaps you’ll not be able to tell about us,” Kelexel said. “And who’d believe you if you did?”

Thurlow focused on the threat. Granting that this Kelexel was who he said he was, then here was profound danger. Who could stand against such a creature? Thurlow suddenly saw himself as a Sandwich Islander facing iron cannon.

“Why’re you here?” he repeated.

Annoying question! Kelexel thought. A momentary confusion overcame him. Why was the witchdoctor so persistent? But he was a witchdoctor, a primitive, and perhaps knowledgeable in mysterious ways. “You may know things helpful to me,” he said.

“Helpful? If you come from such an advanced civilization that you…”

“I will question you and dispute with you,” Kelexel said. “Perhaps something will emerge.”

Why is he here? Thurlow asked himself. If he’s what he says he is… why? Bits of Kelexel’s phrases sorted themselves through Thurlow’s awareness. Immortal. Storyships. Search for amusement. Nemesis boredom. Immortal. Immortal. Immortal… Boredom!

Thurlow’s stare began to rasp on Kelexel. “You doubt your sanity, eh?” Kelexel asked.

“Is that why you’re here?” Thurlow asked. “Because you doubt your sanity?” It was the wrong thing to say and Thurlow knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth.

“How dare you?” Kelexel demanded. “My civilization monitors the sanity of all its members. The orderliness of our neural content is insured by the original setting to Tiggywaugh’s web when the infant receives the gift of immortality.”

“Tiggy… Tiggywaugh’s web?” Thurlow asked. “A… a mechanical device?”

“Mechanical? Well… yes.”

Great heavens! Thurlow thought. Is he here to promote some wild psychoanalytic machine? Is this just a promotion scheme?

“The web links all Chem,” Kelexel said. “We’re the daoine-sithe, you understand? The many who are one. This gives us insights you couldn’t imagine, poor creature. It makes the storyships possible. You have nothing like it and you’re blind.”

Thurlow suppressed a feeling of outrage. A mechanical device! Didn’t the poor fool realize he was talking to a psychologist? Thurlow put aside anger, knowing he couldn’t afford it, said: “Am I blind? Perhaps. But not so blind I’m unable to see that any mechanical psychoanalytic device is a useless crutch.”

“Oh?” Kelexel found this an astonishing statement. A useless crutch? The web? “You understand people without such things, eh?” he asked.

“I’ve had a fair amount of success at it,” Thurlow said.

Kelexel took a step into the room, another. He peered up at Thurlow. On the evidence, the native did understand his own kind. Perhaps this wasn’t an idle boast. But could he also see into the Chem, understand them? “What do you see in me?” he asked.

Thurlow studied the oddly squared-off, sensitive face. There’d been pathos, a pleading in that question. The answer must be gentle. “Perhaps,” he said, “you’ve played a part so long that you’ve almost become that part.”

Played a part? Kelexel wondered. He searched for other meaning in the words. Nothing came to him. He said: “My mechanical device has no human failures.”

“How safe that must make the future,” Thurlow said. “How full of certainty. Then why are you here?”

Why am I here? Kelexel wondered. He could see now that the reasons he’d given himself were mere rationalizations. He began to regret this confrontation, felt a sense of naked exposure before Thurlow. “An immortal Chem doesn’t have to give reasons,” he said.

“Are you truly immortal?”

“Yes!”

Suddenly, Thurlow believed him without reservation. There was something about this intruder, some outrageous quality of person that belied pretense and sham. As abruptly, Thurlow realized why Kelexel had come here. Knowing this, he wondered how he could tell the creature.

“Immortal,” Thurlow said. “I know why you’re here. You’re drunk on too much living. You’re like a person climbing a sheer cliff. The higher you climb, the farther it is to fall—but oh how attractive the depths seem. You came here because you fear an accident.”

Kelexel focused on the one word: Accident!

“There’s no such thing as an accident for a Chem,” he sneered. “The Chem is human and intelligent. Original intelligence may’ve been an accident, but nothing after that is an accident. Everything that happens to a Chem from the day he’s taken from his vat is what he sets out to accomplish.”

“How orderly,” Thurlow said.