The Wave (10 page)

24

The next month went along like that. The days I spent talking with Wheeler about GT and his odd ways. The doctor-

general didn’t share much with me about the goings-on in the government study. But now and then he let some information slip.

Like once when he said that many of the XTs in custody were aware of their families but didn’t seem to have any more closeness with them than to any other human.

“They say things like ‘This body’s sire-side,’” Wheeler confided, “or ‘The children of this one’s womb.’”

GT was the only XT they knew of that had exhibited feelings for relations. Wheeler and his superiors worried that this was a kind of alien propaganda; that if these ghouls (his word, not mine) could lobby among the living, then they might start some movement that would retard the necessary actions needed to exterminate all XT cellular life.

Much of the time I spent at the Wheeler home, I felt as if I were going crazy. The nights I spent alone, I obsessed over many large and small matters. I worried about what Nella must have thought when she came back to the booth and found me gone. I worried about my mother and her grief over being the cause of her lover’s murder. Krista gave me regular updates on my sister’s health, but I didn’t know whether to believe her.

It seemed ridiculous that I could walk freely around the two-story mansion but I could not walk away or even make a telephone call. I thought of pulling a knife on Wheeler or setting the house on fire, but I didn’t have the physical courage to do either.

I spent much of the time writing. By then I realized that I probably wasn’t being spied upon. Wheeler knew I was his prisoner and that he had complete control over my communication with the outside world, so he didn’t feel the need to spy on me. I began this history in earnest. When I was at work on it, I felt that I was at least attempting to counter the insane and illegal activities of Wheeler and my government.

Three times a week, coinciding with Wheeler’s scheduled “graveyard” shifts at the facility, I had wild sex with Krista, who said that she hadn’t seen her husband with an erection in over a year and a half. She was lonely and starved for love. Every night he was gone, she’d come to my room, and I was always ready for her. Some evenings we got a little rough with each other. She was the stronger of us, so any wrestling ended up with her on top. And if I happened to win, she would slap me and push me to the floor.

Even now, when I remember that month, I get aroused.

I was also morally conflicted, wondering if I should be answering more of David’s questions. Maybe he was right. Maybe the fate of mankind really was at stake. But his unshakable intention to commit genocide on the life-form that had resuscitated my father always stopped me short. The tension that arose in me was eased by sex with my captor’s wife.

“Do you love me?” she asked one night, about two weeks after we’d been having sex.

I did not, but I said, “Yes. I love you.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I do. You know I haven’t even been able to make love with a woman since my wife left me.”

I hadn’t told Krista about Nella. I felt guilty being with another woman since Nella and I had been together, and I didn’t want Krista asking me questions about her.

“Really?” Krista asked. “Why not?”

“It’s just that you make me feel more comfortable. I feel that I can be a man with you.”

Men and women, I think, know intrinsically how to lie to each other. I needed Krista on my side, so I gave her the power over me with my words.

She didn’t talk about leaving her husband or going off with me. All she needed was for me to tell her that she was the only woman who could have my heart. In turn, she told me that I was the best and sweetest she had ever known.

I waited for another week to pass before suggesting that we escape.

“Then we could be together,” I said.

I may have even believed it at the time. The little I’d had in life was gone. I hadn’t paid my rent, so Felicity Fine had probably moved me out of the garage. Nella had the money I’d taken from Bobby Bliss’s grave, but who knew what she’d do with that after I had walked out on her without a word? And even if Nella kept my money, she’d probably move on to another man. Why wouldn’t she? None of that mattered, because I’d never see her again anyway. The government would be after me if I escaped. I could never go back to the life I’d known.

“No,” Krista said. “I can’t go. I’m too old to be on the run. And you should stick it out. Why put your life on the line when they may come up with the toxin any day? Scientists around the world are working on it now. Once they come up with the right cocktail, the reason for secrecy will be over.”

“Do you think it’s right to exterminate the XTs?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “David says it’s like any other disease, that it needs to be stopped before it infects the whole world.”

“But how can that be?” I asked my secret lover. “The way they see it, the whole being multiplies less than a fraction of a fraction of a percent in a year. There couldn’t be much of an invasion if the disease doesn’t reproduce.”

“Maybe there’s already enough in the ground to overtake us,” Krista said, parroting her husband. “Like oil or natural gas.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’d sure like to get away from here.”

“Stay awhile longer,” she said, kissing me tenderly.

At some point in the middle of the night, I came to the realization that Krista had no more intention of letting me go than did her husband.

That was when I decided to try and escape without her help.

I had already made a tentative plan. I’d make it out by hiding in the SUV on one of the outings that Thalia or Krista took. I didn’t know if there were sentries that searched them on the way out. But I reasoned that guards at the gate would arouse suspicion among the neighbors.

The other problem was surveillance. I had no idea if there were cameras set up at the various access points of the house. They could have cameras anywhere.

One night I decided I had to try to escape. Even if I failed, I would at least know what kind of system they were using. I couldn’t just stay in my room waiting for Wheeler to decide on my fate.

The next day, I found a large blanket in a hall closet and carried it to my room. Just as I was closing my door, I saw Thalia watching from down the hall.

I tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing. Thalia and I never spoke. I had tried to talk to her those first few days, figuring that the old-time bond between blacks that had grown up through the racism of America would put us on the same side in the struggle against white Wheeler. But she never shared a personal moment with me. All she ever uttered was
yes
and
no
or
Dr. Wheeler said . . .

I was going to use the blanket to hide under. Maybe nobody would look. Maybe if they did look, the blanket wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

I knew Krista planned to go shopping the next day, because she had said so at lunch. I was ready to go. The government couldn’t come after me with all their force, because the XT project was still top-secret. I’d go south and then east. I’d change my name and wait for a sign that the government was through with their machinations.

It wasn’t much of a plan.

It didn’t really make sense.

Why run if I was in a nice home with food and a television set, a bed to sleep in, and sex three times a week? Where would I end up? Why go?

By three in the morning, I had decided against escape. Krista was right. I’d stay.

Not long after that, the door came open. I switched on the lamp. David was home that evening, so I was surprised to see Krista.

“Turn it off,” she said.

She sat on the bed, but there was no leaning over me in heat as she usually did. She was quiet and still.

“Errol.”

“What?”

“Dr. Gregory has been running tests on your blood ever since you left XT-1,” she said in a rush. “He’s found an abnormality and has gotten permission from higher up to have you brought in for more tests. David says that you’re to be taken away day after tomorrow.”

“For how long?”

She didn’t respond.

“How long, Krista?”

“He said that you very well may not be coming back.”

My tongue went completely dry. I started coughing. I reached for the water pitcher next to my bed and drank straight from it without bothering about the glass. But no matter how much I drank, the thirst could not be quenched.

Krista sat in the gloom of the dark room like Wheeler’s angel come to proclaim my death.

“What does it mean?” I asked.

“They may reclassify you as an XT,” she said.

“No.”

“You have to escape,” my lover said with conviction.

I told her my plan, and she said that it might work. Tomorrow it was just her and Jerome the guard going off together. She said that I should wait after breakfast and then go down to the garage and climb in the back and get under my blanket.

“Don’t make a sound,” she said. “And remember that I love you. And that I’m sorry. I’m very sorry about having to put you through this.”

I thought at the time that she meant the threat of annihilation at the hands of her husband’s masters.

25

Breakfast was as always. Wheeler engaged me in subtle interrogation while Thalia served and Krista interrupted now and then to talk about her house duties and the progress of her gardens.

“Have you checked on the plant life around the graveyards?” I asked Wheeler at one point.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“The trees. Don’t you think the XTs might want to inhabit the trees? I mean, they did that dog.”

“Is this anything that your GT suggested?”

“No. No. He never talked about plants. I just thought that might be something you would have checked.”

“That’s helpful, Errol. I’m pleasantly surprised.”

“I’d like to be of help,” I said. “I mean, if these cells are as dangerous as you say, we’ll all have to fight them.”

Wheeler stared at me, his dense green eyes reflecting the diffuse light of the orchard.

“Dr. Gregory thinks our talks have been fruitless. He says that he’s not interested in the psychology of the XT but in their instinctual drive. He tells me that I’m wasting valuable research time on you.”

“No, sir,” I said, thinking that I’d gone too far with
sir.

“Well,” Wheeler said, “tomorrow you and I will take a drive down to XT-1 and speak to Gregory personally about your newfound patriotism.”

The garage was attached, and the door connecting it to the house was unguarded and unlocked. Krista had given me the extra remote to unlock the car doors. The side lights flashed, and the beep of the horn sounded to me like a sonic boom, but no one came. I burrowed under the gray-blue blanket and waited for my chance at freedom.

I told Wheeler that I’d sat up all night worrying about my lack of enthusiasm in our talks. I was eager to help, but I should probably get some sleep. I begged off on our late-morning meeting, knowing that if I hesitated, Dr. Gregory would have me on an autopsy table before the week was out.

I don’t know that I fell asleep there waiting for Krista and Jerome, but I did have a vision that I thought was a dream.

There was a place far away and in darkness but not in the earth. It was cold and unfriendly, silent except for the weak reminiscence of gravity and light. There was a song, or maybe just a note or two, playing in the distance. It was a language used by beings now dead and gone. But the words they spoke were their salvation. They had become their language and were now looking for someone to hear them and speak their name. Their voices traveled the universe waiting for a receiver, for the chance to breathe again.

Another voice drowned out this sibilant whisper. It was the deep and robust song of a far-traveler passing nearby. It was the radiant opera of an infinite, intangible entity that had occurred only once, in absolute perfection; a unitude of perfectly balanced ideas that was now seeking to breathe its life into another.

Then there was a long sermon on the perpetuity of vibrations and sunlight in an endless field of quartz. This oration had something to do with the changing of Law depending upon placement in the physical universe. There was a high moral stance to the lecture and there were many dissenting views, but I didn’t really understand much of it. I didn’t know where I was or who was speaking. I didn’t know which sense organs perceived these communiqués or what language was being spoken. But it was all one tongue, I was sure of that.

One tongue in an endlessly varied cosmic patois.

The doors of the car opened and slammed shut.

“How long will we be gone?” the guard Jerome asked.

“As long as it takes,” Krista replied.

The words were rude, but her tone was friendly enough.

The ignition turned over. I heard the echo of that universal language in the lurching engine. The garage door was engaged. The car started moving. My heart was beating so hard that I held my breath to slow it down.

While they drove, Krista and Jerome talked. She was in the backseat, nearer me, but I couldn’t make out what either of them was saying. After maybe twenty minutes, we still seemed to be on dirt roads, which was odd, because, as I remembered it, the paved highway was only about ten minutes from Wheeler’s door.

The car came to a stop, and one of the doors opened. When I heard Jerome’s army boots crunching gravel, I knew I had been found out somehow. Maybe Krista had betrayed me. Why? I felt around for something to defend myself with.

The back door opened.

“Not today, Jerry,” Krista said.

A zipper sounded.

There was a grunt and then a moan.

“I need it, baby,” he said.

There was about five minutes of kissing and whispers. Krista stopped telling him no.

The SUV started rocking, and they talked to each other. Krista groaned in pleasures that I hadn’t known it was possible for her to achieve. I realized that I was only one of her lovers, only a part of her despair over Wheeler and his remote war.

At one point Krista was screaming. Jerome was urging her on in a voice much lower than he usually used. We were all swaying together. Despite my feeling of abandonment, I had an erection. Then they stopped. If they had gone on much longer, I might have climaxed with them.

“I love you,” Jerome said tenderly.

Krista said something, but I couldn’t make it out. It was a whisper of love. I knew she was trying to protect me from hearing her tell another man the words we had shared.

Jerome got back into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He drove for what seemed a very long time.

We slowed and then moved in tight circles for a while. The car stopped, and both the front and back doors came open. The horn beeped. The locks clicked into place.

“I want to buy chocolate, Jerry,” Krista said in a happy voice.

That was the last time I ever heard Krista Arnet-Wheeler’s voice. And even though she was walking off with another man, I couldn’t be angry. She had saved my life. She had done more than anyone else had ever done for me—risked her own safety without a moment’s hesitation.