DOCTOR AIN WAS recognized
on the Omaha-Chicago flight. A biologist colleague from Pasadena came out of
the toilet and saw Ain in an aisle seat. Five years before, this man had been
jealous of Ain's huge grants. Now he nodded coldly and was surprised at the
intensity of Ain's response. He almost turned back to speak, but he felt too
tired; like nearly everyone, he was fighting the flu.
The stewardess
handing out coats after they landed remembered Ain too: A tall thin nondescript
man with rusty hair. He held up the line staring at her; since he already had
his raincoat with him she decided it was some kooky kind of pass and waved him
on.
She saw Ain
shamble off into the airport smog, apparently alone. Despite the big Civil
Defense signs, O'Hare was late getting underground. No one noticed the woman.
The wounded,
dying woman.
Ain was not
identified en route to New York, but a 2:40 jet carried an "Ames" on
the checklist, which was thought to be a misspelling of Ain. It was. The plane
had circled for an hour while Ain watched the smoky seaboard monotonously tilt,
straighten, and tilt again.
The woman was
weaker now. She coughed, picking weakly at the scabs on her face half-hidden
behind her long hair. Her hair, Ain saw, that great mane which had been so
splendid, was drabbed and thinning now. He looked to seaward, willing himself
to think of cold, clean breakers. On the horizon he saw a vast black rug:
somewhere a tanker had opened its vents. The woman coughed again. Ain closed
his eyes. Smog shrouded the plane.
He was picked
up next while checking in for the BOAC flight to Glasgow. Kennedy-Underground
was a boiling stew of people, the air system unequal to the hot September
afternoon. The check-in line swayed and sweated, staring dully at the newscast.
SAVE THE LAST GREEN MANSIONS—a conservation group was protesting the
defoliation and drainage of the Amazon basin. Several people recalled the
beautifully colored shots of the new clean bomb. The line squeezed together to
let a band of uniformed men go by. They were wearing buttons inscribed: WHO'S
AFRAID?
That was when
a woman noticed Ain. He was holding a newssheet and she heard it rattling in
his hand. Her family hadn't caught the flu, so she looked at him sharply. Sure
enough, his forehead was sweaty. She herded her kids to the side away from Ain.
He was using Instac throat spray, she remembered. She
didn't think much of Instac; her family used Kleer. While she was looking at
him, Ain suddenly turned his head and stared into her face, with the spray
still floating down. Such inconsiderateness! She turned her back. She didn't
recall him talking to any woman, but she perked up her ears when the clerk read
off Ain's destination. Moscow!
The clerk
recalled that too, with disapproval. Ain checked in alone, he reported. No
woman had been ticketed for Moscow, but it would have been easy enough to split
up her tickets. (By that time they were sure she was with him.)
Ain's flight
went via Iceland with an hour's delay at Keflavik. Ain walked over to the
airport park, gratefully breathing the sea-filled air. Every few breaths he shuddered.
Under the whine of bull-dozers the sea could be heard running its huge paws up
and down the keyboard of the land. The little park had a grove of yellowed
birches and a hock of wheatears foraged by the path. Next month they would be
in North Africa, Ain thought. Two thousand miles of tiny wing beats. He threw
them some crumbs from a packet in his pocket.
The woman
seemed stronger here. She was panting in the sea wind, her eyes on Ain. Above
her the birches were as gold as those where he had first seen her, the day his
life began . . . Squatting under a stump to watch a shrewmouse he had been,
when he caught a falling ripple of green and recognized the shocking, naked
girl-flesh, creamy, pink-tipped—coming toward him among the golden bracken! Young
Ain held his breath, his nose in the sweet moss and his heart going crash-crash. And then he was staring at
the outrageous fall of that hair down her narrow back, watching it dance around
her heart-shaped buttocks, while the shrewmouse ran over his paralyzed hand.
The lake was utterly still, dusty silver under the misty sky, and she made no
more than a muskrat’s ripple to rock the floating golden leaves. The silence
closed back, the trees like torches where the naked girl had walked the wild
wood, reflected in Ain’s shining eyes. For a time he believed he had seen an
Oread.
Ain was last
on board for the Glasgow leg. The stewardess recalled dimly that he seemed
restless. She could not identify the woman. There were a lot of women on board,
and babies. Her passenger list had several errors.
At Glasgow
airport a waiter remembered that a man like Ain had called for Scottish
oatmeal, and eaten two bowls, although of course it wasn't really oatmeal. A
young mother with a pram saw him tossing crumbs to the birds.
When he
checked in at the BOAC desk, he was hailed by a Glasgow professor who was going
to the same conference in Moscow. This man had been one of Ain’s teachers. (It
was not known that Ain had done his postgraduate work in Europe.) They chatted
all the way across the North Sea.
"I
wondered about that," the professor said later. "Why have you come
'round about? I asked him. He told me the direct flights were booked up."
(This was found to be untrue: Ain had apparently avoided the Moscow jet hoping
to escape attention.)
The professor
spoke with relish of Ain’s work.
"Brilliant?
Oh, aye. And stubborn, too; very very stubborn. It was as though a
concept—often the simplest relation, mind you—would stop him in his tracks, and
fascinate him. He would hunt all 'round it instead of going on to the next
thing as a more docile mind would. Truthfully, I wondered at first if he could
be just a bit thick. But you recall who it was said that the capacity for
wonder at matters of common acceptance occurs in the superior mind? And, of
course, so it proved when he shook us all up over that enzyme conversion
business. A pity your government took him away from his line, there. No, he
said nothing of this, I say it to you, young man. We spoke in fact largely of
my work. I was surprised to find he'd kept up. He asked me what my sentiments
about it were, which surprised me again. Now, understand, I’d not seen the man
for five years, but he seemed—well, perhaps just tired, as who is not? I’m sure
he was glad to have a change; he jumped out for a legstretch wherever we came
down. At Oslo, even Bonn. Oh yes, he did feed the birds, but that was nothing
new for Ain. His social life when I knew him? Radical causes? Young man, I’ve
said what I've said because of who it was that introduced you, but I’ll have
you know it is an impertinence in you to think ill of Charles Ain, or that he
could do a harmful deed. Good evening."
The professor
said nothing of the woman in Ain's life.
Nor could he
have, although Ain had been intimately with her in the university time. He had
let no one see how he was obsessed with her; with the miracle, the wealth of
her body, her inexhaustibility. They met at his every spare moment; sometimes
in public pretending to be casual strangers under his friends' grave formality;
And later in their privacies—what doubled intensity of love! He reveled in her,
possessed her, allowed her no secrets. His dreams were of her sweet springs and
shadowed places and her white rounded glory in the moonlight, finding always
more, always new dimensions of his joy.
The danger of
her frailty was far off then in the rush of birdsong and the springing leverets
of the meadow. On dark days she might cough a bit, but so did he . . . In those
years he had had no thought to the urgent study of disease.
At the Moscow
conference nearly everyone noticed Ain at some point or another, which was to
be expected in view of his professional stature. It was a small, high-caliber
meeting. Ain was late in; a day's reports were over, and his was to be on the
third and last.
Many people
spoke with Ain, and several sat with him at meals. No one was surprised that he
spoke little; he was a retiring man except on a few memorable occasions of hot
argument. He did strike some of his friends as a bit tired and jerky.
An Indian
molecular engineer who saw him with the throat spray kidded him about bringing
over Asian flu. A Swedish colleague recalled that Ain had been called away to
the transatlantic phone at lunch; and when he returned Ain volunteered the
information that some had turned up missing in his home lab. There was another
joke, and Ain said cheerfully, “Oh yes, quite active."
At that point
one of the Chicom biologists swung into his daily propaganda chores about bacteriological
warfare and accused Ain of manufacturing biotic weapons. Ain took the wind out
of his sails by saying: "You're perfectly right." By tacit consent,
there was very little talk about military applications, industrial dusting, or
subjects of that type. And nobody recalled seeing Ain with any woman other than
old Madame Valche, who could scarcely have subverted anyone from her
wheelchair.
Ain's one
speech was bad, even for him. He always had a poor public voice but his ideas
were usually expressed with the lucidity so typical of the first-rate mind.
This time he seemed muddled, with little new to say. His audience excused this
as the muffling effects of security. Ain then got into a tangled point about
the course of evolution in which he seemed to be trying to show that something
was very wrong indeed. When he wound up with a reference to Hudson's bell bird
"singing for a later race," several listeners wondered if he could be
drunk.
The big
security break came right at the end, when he suddenly began to describe the
methods he had used to mutate and redesign a leukemia virus. He explained the
procedure with admirable clarity in four sentences and paused. Then gave a
terse description of the effects of the mutated strain, which were maximal only
in the higher primates. Recovery rate among the lower mammals and other orders
was close to percent. As to vectors, he went on, any warm-blooded animal
served. In addition, the virus retained its viability in most environmental
media and performed very well airborne. Contagion rate was extremely high.
Almost off-hand, Ain added that no test primate or accidentally exposed human
had survived beyond the twenty-second day.
These words
fell into a silence broken only by the running feet of the Egyptian delegate
making for the door. Then a gilt chair went over as an American bolted after
him.
Ain seemed
unaware that his audience was in a state of unbelieving paralysis. It had all
come so fast: a man who had been blowing his nose was staring popeyed around
his handkerchief, another who had been lighting a pipe grunted as his fingers
singed. Two men chatting by the door missed his words entirely and their
laughter chimed into a dead silence in which echoed Ain's words: “--really no
point in attempting."
Later they
found he had been explaining that the -virus utilized the body's own
immunomechanisms, and so defense was by definition hopeless.
That was all.
Ain looked around vaguely for questions and then started down the aisle. By the
time he got to the door, people were swarming after him. He wheeled about and
said rather crossly, "Yes, of course it is very wrong. I told you that. We
are all wrong. Now it's over."
An hour later
they found he had gone, having apparently reserved a Sinair flight to Karachi.
The security men caught up with him at Hong Kong. By then he seemed really very
ill, and went with them peacefully. They started back to the States via Hawaii.
His captors
were civilized types; they saw he was gentle and treated him accordingly. He
had no weapons or drugs on him. They took him out handcuffed for a stroll at
Osaka let him feed his crumbs to the birds, and they listened with interest to
his account of the migration routes of the common brown sandpiper. He was very
hoarse. At that point, he was wanted only for the security thing. There was no
question of a woman at all.
He dozed most
of the way to the islands, but when they came in sight he pressed to the window
and began, to mutter. The security man behind him got the first inkling that
there was a woman in it, and turned on his recorder.
“ . . . Blue,
blue and green until you see the wounds. Oh my girl, Oh beautiful, you won't
die. I won't let you die. I tell you girl, it's over . . . Lustrous eyes, look
at me, let me see you now alive! Great queen, my sweet body, my girl, have I
saved you? . . . Oh terrible to know, and noble, Chaos' child green-robed in
blue and golden light . . . the thrown and spinning ball of life alone in space
. . . Have I saved you?"
On the last
leg, he was obviously feverish. "She may have tricked me, you know,"
he said confidentially to the government man. "You have to be prepared for
that, of course. I know her!" He chuckled confidentially. "She's no
small thing. But wring your heart out—"
Coming over
San Francisco he was merry. "Don't you know the otters will go back in
there? I'm certain of it. That fill won’t last; there'll be a bay there
again."
They got him
on a stretcher at Hamilton Air Base, and he went unconscious shortly after
takeoff. Before he collapsed, he'd insisted on throwing the last of his
birdseed on the field.
"Birds
are, you know, warm-blooded," he confided to the agent who was handcuffing
him to the stretcher. Then Ain smiled gently and lapsed into inertness. He
stayed that way almost all the remaining ten days of his life. By then, of
course, no one really cared. Both the government men had died quite early,
after they finished analyzing the birdseed and throat-spray. The woman at Kennedy
had just started feeling sick.
The
tape-recorder they put by his bed functioned right on through, but if anybody
had been around to replay it they would have found little but babbling.
"Gaea Gloriatrix," he crooned, "Gaea girl queen . . ." At
times he was grandiose and tormented. "Our life, your death!" he
yelled. "Our death would have been your death too, no need for that, no
need."
At other times
he was accusing. "What did you do about the dinosaurs?" he demanded.
"Did they annoy you? How did you fix them? Cold. Queen, you're too cold!
You came close to it this time, my girl," he raved. And then he wept and
caressed the bedclothes and was maudlin.
Only at the
end, lying in his filth and thirst, still chained where they had forgotten him,
he was suddenly coherent. In the light clear voice of a lover planning a summer
picnic he asked the recorder happily:
"Have you
ever thought about bears? They have so much . . . funny they never came along
further. By any chance were you saving them, girl?" And he chuckled in his
ruined throat and later died.
The young man
sitting at 200 N, 750 W sent a casually venomous glance
up at the nonfunctional shoofly ventilator
and went on reading his letter. He was sweating heavily, stripped to his shorts
in the hotbox of what passed for a hotel room in Cuyapán.
How do other wives do it? I stay busy-busy with the Ann Arbor
grant review programs and the seminar, saying brightly ‘Oh yes, Alan is in
Colombia setting up a biological pest-control program, isn't it wonderful?' But
inside I imagine you surrounded by nineteen-year-old raven-haired cooing
beauties, every one panting with social dedication and filthy rich. And forty
inches of bosom busting out of her delicate lingerie. I even figured it in centimeters,
that's 101.6 centimeters of busting. Oh, darling, darling, do what you want
only come home safe.
Alan grinned
fondly, briefly imagining the only body he longed for. His girl, his magic
Anne. Then he got up to open the window another cautious notch. A long pale
mournful face looked in—a goat. The room opened on the goatpen, the stench was
vile. Air, anyway. He picked up the letter.
Everything is just about as you left it, except that the
Peedsville horror seems to be getting worse. They’re calling it the Sons of
Adam cult now. Why can’t they do something, even if it is a religion? The Red
Cross has set up a refugee camp in Ashton, Georgia. Imagine, refugees in the
U.S.A. I heard two little girls were carried out all slashed up. Oh, Alan.
Which reminds me, Barney came over with a wad of clippings he
wanted me to send you. I'm putting them in a separate envelope; I know what
happens to very fat letters in foreign POs. He says, in-case you don't get
them, what do the following have in common? Peedsville, Sao Paulo, Phoenix, San
Diego, Shanghai, New Delhi, Tripoli, Brisbane, Johannesburg and Lubbock, Texas.
He says the hint is, remember where the Intertropical Convergence Zone is now.
That makes no sense to me, maybe it will to your superior ecological brain. All
I could see about the clippings was that they were fairly horrible accounts of
murders or massacres of women. The worst was the New Delhi one, about
"rafts of female corpses" in the river. The funniest (!) was the
Texas Army officer who shot his wife, three daughters and his aunt, because God
told him to clean the place up.
Barney's such an old dear, he's coming over Sunday to help me take
off the downspout and see what's blocking it. He's dancing on air right now;
since you left, his spruce budworm-moth antipheromone program finally paid off.
You know he tested over 2,000 compounds? Well, it seems that good old 2,097
really works. When I asked him what it does he just giggles, you know how shy
he is with women. Anyway, it seems that a one-shot spray program will save the
forests, without harming a single other thing. Birds and people can eat it all
day, he says.
Well, sweetheart, that's all the news except Amy goes back to
Chicago to school Sunday. The place will be a tomb, I’ll miss her frightfully
in spite of her being at the stage where I'm her worst enemy. The sullen sexy
subteens, Angie says. Amy sends love to her daddy. I send you my whole heart,
all that words can't say.
Your Anne
Alan put the
letter safely in his note e and glanced over the rest of the thin packet of
mail, refusing to let himself dream of home and Anne. Barney's "fat
envelope" wasn't there. He threw himself on the rumpled bed, yanking off
the light cord a minute before the town generator went off for the night. In
the darkness the list of places Barney had mentioned spread themselves around a
misty globe that turned, troublingly, in his mind. Something . . .
But then the
memory of the hideously parasitized children he had worked with at the clinic
that day took possession of his thoughts. He set himself to considering the
data he must collect. Look for the vulnerable link in the behavioral chain—how
often Barney—Dr. Barnhard Braithwaite—had pounded it into his skull. Where was
it, where? In the morning he would start work on bigger canefly cages. . ..
At that
moment, five thousand miles north, Anne was writing:
Oh, darling, darling, your first three letters are here, they all
came together. I knew you were
writing. Forget what I said about swarthy heiresses, that was all a joke. My
darling I know, I know . . . us. Those dreadful canefly larvae, those poor
little kids. If you weren't my husband I'd think you were a saint or something.
(I do anyway.)
I have your letters pinned up all over the house, makes it a lot
less lonely. No real news here except things feel kind of quiet and spooky.
Barney and I got the downspout out, it was full of a big rotted hoard of
squirrel nuts. They must have been dropping them down the top, I’ll put a wire
over it. (Don't worry, I'll use a ladder this time.)
Barney's in an odd, grim mood. He's taking this Sons of Adam thing
very seriously, it seems he's going to be on the investigation committee if
that ever gets off the ground. The weird part is that no one seems to be doing
anything, as if it's just too big. Selina Peters has been printing some acid
comments, like: When one man kills his wife you call murder, but when enough do
it we call it a life-style. I think it's spreading, but nobody knows because
the media have been asked to downplay it. Barney says it's being viewed as a
form of contagious hysteria. He insisted I send you this ghastly interview,
printed on thin paper. It's not going to be published, of course. The quietness
is worse, though, it's like something terrible was going on just out of sight.
After reading Barney's thing I called up Pauline in San Diego to make sure she
was all right. She sounded funny, as if she wasn't saying everything . . . my
own sister. Just after she said things were great she suddenly asked if she could
come and stay here awhile next month. I said come right away, but she wants to
sell her house first. I wish she'd hurry.
The diesel car is okay now, it just needed its filter changed. I
had to go out to Springfield to get one but Eddie installed it for only $2.50.
He’s going to bankrupt his garage.
In case you didn't guess, those places of Barney's are all about
latitude 300 N or S—the horse latitudes. When I said not exactly, he said
remember the Equatorial Convergence Zone shifts in winter, and to add in Libya,
Osaka, and a place I forget—wait, Alice Springs, Australia. What has this to do
with anything, I asked. He said, "Nothing—I hope." I leave it to you,
great brains like Barney can be weird.
Oh my dearest, here's all of me to all of you. Your letters make
life possible. But don't feel you have to, I can tell how tired you must be.
Just know we’re together, always everywhere.
Your Anne
Oh PS I had to open this to put Barney's thing in, it wasn't the
secret police. Here it is. All love again. A.
In the
goat-infested room where Alan read this, rain was drumming on the roof. He put
the letter to his nose to catch the faint perfume once more, and folded it
away. Then he pulled out the yellow flimsy Barney had sent and began to read,
frowning.
PEEDSVILLE CULT/SONS OF ADAM SPECIAL. Statement by driver Sgt.
Willard Mews, Globe Fork, Ark. We hit the roadblock about 80 miles west of
Jacksonville. Major John Heinz of Ashton was expecting us, he gave us an escort
of two riot vehicles headed by Capt. T. Parr. Major Helm appeared shocked to
see that the N.I.H. medical team included two women doctors. He warned us in
the strongest terms of the danger. So Dr. Patsy Putnam (Urbana, Ill.), the
psychologist, decided to stay behind at the Army cordon. But Dr. Elaine Fay
(Clinton, N.J.) insisted on going with us, saying she was the epi-something
(epidemiologist).
We drove behind one of the riot cars at 30 m.p.h. for about an
hour without seeing anything unusual. There were two big signs saying SONS OF
ADAM—LIBERATED ZONE. We passed some small pecan-packing plants and a
citrus-processing plant. The men there looked at us but did not do anything
unusual. I didn’t see any children or women of course. Just outside Peedsville
we stopped at a big barrier made of oil drums in front of a large citrus
warehouse. This area is old, sort of a shantytown and trailer park. The new
part of town with the shopping center and developments is about a mile farther
on. A warehouse worker with a shotgun came out and told us to wait for the mayor.
I don't think he saw Dr. Elaine Fay then, she was sitting sort of bent down in
back.
Mayor Blount drove up in a police cruiser and our chief, Dr.
Premack, explained our mission from the Surgeon General. Dr. Premack was very
careful not to make any remarks insulting to the mayor's religion. Mayor Blount
agreed to let the party go on into Peedsville to take samples of the soil and
water and so on and talk to the doctor who lives there. The mayor was about 6'
2", weight maybe 230 or 240, tanned, with grayish hair. He was smiling and
chuckling in a friendly manner.
Then he looked inside the car and saw Dr. Elaine Fay and he blew
up. He started yelling we had to all get the hell back. But Dr. Premack talked
to him and cooled him down and finally the mayor said Dr. Fay should go into
the warehouse office and stay-there with the door closed. I had to stay there
too and see she didn't come out, and one of the mayor's men would drive the
party.
So the medical people and the mayor and one of the riot vehicles
went on into Peedsville and I took Dr. Fay back into the warehouse office and
sat down. It was real hot and stuffy. Dr. Fay opened a window, but when I heard
her trying to talk to an old man outside I told her she couldn't do that and
closed the window. The old man went away. Then she wanted to talk to me but I
told her I did not feel like conversing. I felt it was real wrong, her being
there.
So then she started looking through the office files and reading
papers there. I told her that was a bad idea, she shouldn't do that. She said
the government expected her to investigate. She showed me a booklet or magazine
they had there, it was called Man Listens
to God by Reverend McIllhenny. They had a carton full in the office. I
started reading it and Dr. Fay said she wanted to wash her hands. So I took her
back along a kind of enclosed hallway beside the conveyor to where the toilet
was. There were no doors or windows so I went back. After awhile she called out
that there was a cot back there, she was going to lie down. I figure that was
all right because of the no windows; also I was glad to be rid of her company.
When I got to reading the book it was very intriguing. It was very
deep thinking about how man is now on trial with God and if we fulfill our duty
-God will bless us with a real new life on Earth. The signs and portents show
it. It wasn't like, you know, Sunday school stuff. It was deep.
After a while I heard some music and saw the soldiers from the
other riot car were across the street by the gas tanks, sitting in the shade of
some trees and kidding with the workers from the plant. One of them was playing
a guitar, not electric, just plain. It looked so peaceful.
Then Mayor Blount drove up alone in the cruiser and came in. When
he saw I was reading the book he smiled at me sort of fatherly, but he looked
tense. He asked me where Dr. Fay was and I told him she was lying down in back.
He said that was okay. Then he kind of sighed and went back down the hall,
closing the door behind him. I sat and listened to the guitar man, trying to
hear what he was singing. I felt really hungry, my lunch was in Dr. Premack's
car.
After a while the door opened and Mayor Blount came back in. He
looked terrible, his clothes were messed up and he had bloody scrape marks on
his face. He didn't say anything, he just looked at me hard and fierce, like he
might have been disoriented. I saw his zipper was open and there was blood on
his clothing and also on his (private parts). I didn't feel frightened, I felt
something important had happened. I tried to get him to sit down. But he
motioned me to follow him back down the hall to where Dr. Pay was. "You
must see," he said. He went into the toilet and I went into a kind of
little room there, where the cot was. The light was fairly good, reflected off
the tin roof from where the walls stopped. I saw Dr. Pay lying on the cot in a
peaceful appearance.
She was lying straight, her clothing was to some extent different
but her legs were together. I was glad to see that. Her blouse was pulled up
and I saw there was a cut or incision on her abdomen. The blood was coming out
there, or it had been coming out there, Like a mouth. It wasn't moving at this
time. Also her throat was cut open.
I returned to the office. Mayor Blount was sitting down, looking
very tired. He had cleaned himself off. He said, “I did it for you. Do you
understand?"
He seemed like my father. I can't say it better than that. I
realized he was under a terrible strain, he had taken a lot on himself for me.
He went on to explain how Dr. Fay was very dangerous, she was what they calls
cripto-female (crypto?), the most dangerous kind. He had exposed her and
purified the situation. He was very straightforward, I didn't feel confused at
all, I knew he had done what was right.
We discussed the book, how man must purify himself and show God a
clean world. He had some people raise the question of how can man reproduce
without women but such people miss the point. The point is that as long as man
depends on the filthy animal way God won't help him. When man gets rid of his
animal part which is woman, this is the signal God is awaiting. Then God will
reveal the new true clean way, maybe angels will come bringing new souls, or
maybe we will live forever, but it is not our place to speculate, only to obey.
He said some men here had seen an Angel of the Lord. This was very deep, it
seemed like it echoed inside me, I felt it was an inspiration.
Then the medical party drove up and I told Dr. Premack that Dr.
Fay had been taken care of and sent away, and I got in the car to drive them
out of the Liberated Zone. However four of the six soldiers from the roadblock
refused to leave. Capt. Parr tried to argue them out of it but finally agreed
they could stay to guard the oil-drum barrier.
I would have liked to stay too, the place was so peaceful, but
they needed me to drive the car. If I had known there would be all this hassle
I never would have done them the favor. I am not crazy and I have not done
anything wrong and my lawyer will get me out. That is all I have to say.
In Cuyapán the
hot afternoon rain had temporarily ceased. As Alan's fingers let go of Sgt.
Willard Mews's wretched document he caught sight of pencil-scrawled words in
the margin. Barney's spider hand. He squinted.
"Man's
religion and metaphysics are the voices of his glands. Schönweiser, 1878."
Who the devil
Schönweiser was Alan didn't know, but he knew what Barney was conveying. This
murderous crackpot region of McWhosis was a symptom, not a cause. Barney
believed something was physically affecting the Peedsville men, generating
psychosis, and a local religious demagogue had sprung up to “explain” it.
Well, maybe.
But cause or effect. Alan thought only of one thing: eight hundred miles from
Peedsville to Ann Arbor. Anne should be safe. She had to be.
He threw
himself on the lumpy cot, his mind going back exultantly to his work. At the
cost of a million bites and cane cuts be was pretty sure he'd found the weak
link in the canefly cycle. The male mass-mating behavior, the comparative
scarcity of ovulant females. It would be the screwfly solution all over again
with the sexes reversed. Concentrate the pheromone, release sterilized females.
Luckily the breeding populations were comparatively isolated. In a couple of
seasons they ought to have it.' Have to let them go on spraying poison
meanwhile, of course; damn pity, it was slaughtering everything and getting in
the water, and the caneflies had evolved to immunity anyway. But in a couple of
seasons, maybe three, they could drop the canefly populations below
reproductive viability. No more tormented human bodies with those stinking
larvae in the nasal passages and brain. . . . He drifted off for a nap,
grinning.
Up north, Anne
was biting her lip in shame and pain.
Sweetheart, I shouldn't admit but your wife is scared a bit
jittery. Just female nerves or something, nothing to worry about. Everything is
normal up here. It's so eerily normal, nothing in the papers, nothing anywhere
except what I hear through Barney and Lillian. But Pauline's phone won't answer
out in San Diego; the fifth day some strange man yelled at me and banged the
phone down. Maybe she's sold her house--but- why wouldn't she call?
Lillian's on some kind of Save-the-Women committee, like we were
an endangered species, ha-ha—you know Lillian. It seems the Red Cross has
started setting up camps. But she says, after the first rush, only a trickle
are coming out of what they call "the affected-areas." Not many
children, either, even little boys. And they have some air photos around
Lubbock showing what look like mass graves. Oh, Alan, so far it seems to be
mostly spreading west, but something's happening in St. Louis, they're cut off.
So many places seem to have just vanished from the news, I had a nightmare that
there isn't a woman left alive down there. And nobody's doing anything. They
talked about spraying with tranquilizers for a while and then that died out.
What could it do? Somebody at the UN has proposed a convention on--you won't
believe this—femicide. It sounds like a deodorant spray.
Excuse me, honey, I seem to be a little hysterical. George Searles
came back from Georgia talking about God's Will—Searles the lifelong atheist.
Alan, something crazy is happening.
But there aren't any facts. Nothing. The Surgeon General issued a
report on the bodies of the Rahway Rip-Breast Team—I guess I didn't tell you
about that. Anyway, they could find no pathology. Milton Baines wrote a letter
saying the present state of the art we can't distinguish the brain of a saint
from a psychopathic killer, so how could they expect to find what they don't
know how to look for?
Well, enough of these jitters. It’ll be all over by the time you
get back, just history. Everything’s fine here, I fixed the car's muffler
again. And Amy's coming home for the vacations, that'll get my mind off faraway problems.
Oh, something amusing to end with—Angie told me what Barney's
enzyme does to the spruce budworm; It seems it blocks' the male from turning
around after he connects with the female, so he mates with her head instead.
Like clockwork with a cog missing. There're going to be some pretty puzzled
female spruceworms. Now why couldn't Barney tell me that? He really is such a
sweet shy old dear. He's given me some stuff to put in, as usual. I didn't read
it, Now don't worry, my darling, everything's fine, I love you, I love you so.
Always, all ways your Anne
Two weeks later In Cuyapán when Barney's enclosures slid out of
the envelope, Alan didn't read them either. He stuffed them into the pocket of
his bush jacket with a shaking hand and started bundling his notes together on
the rickety table, with a scrawled note to Sister Dominique on top. The hell with
the canefly, the hell with everything except that tremor in his fearless Anne's
handwriting. The hell with being five thousand miles away from his woman, his
child, while some deadly madness raged. He crammed his meager belongings into
his duffel. If he hurried he could catch the bus through to Bogota and maybe
make the Miami flight.
He made it to
Miami but the planes north were jammed. He failed a· quick standby; six hours
to wait. Time to call Anne. When the call got through with some difficulty he
was unprepared for the rush of joy and relief that burst along the wires.
'"Thank
God—I can't believe it—oh, Alan, my darling, are you really—I can't
believe—"
He found he
was repeating too, and all mixed up with the canefly data. They were both
laughing hysterically when he finally hung up. Six hours. He settled in a
frayed plastic chair opposite Aerolineas
Argentinas, his mind half back at the clinic, half on the throngs moving by
him. Something was oddly different here, he perceived presently. Where was the
decorative fauna he usually enjoyed in Miami, the parade of young girls in
crotch-tight pastel jeans? The flounces, boots, wild hats and hairdos, and
startling expanses of newly tanned skin, the brilliant fabrics barely confining
the bob of breasts and buttocks? Not here—but wait; looking closely, he
glimpsed two young faces hidden under unbecoming parkas, their bodies draped in
bulky nondescript skirts. In fact, all down the long vista he could see the
same thing: hooded ponchos, heaped-on clothes and baggy pants, dull colors. A
new style? No, he thought not. It seemed to him their movements suggested
furtiveness, timidity. And they moved in groups. He watched a lone girl
struggle to catch up with others ahead of her; apparently strangers. They
accepted her wordlessly. They're frightened, he thought. Afraid of attracting
notice. Even that gray-haired matron in a pantsuit resolutely leading a flock
of kids was glancing around nervously. And at the Argentine desk opposite he
saw another odd thing; two lines had a big sign over them: MUJERES. Women. They
were crowded with the shapeless forms and very quiet. The men seemed to be
behaving normally; hurrying, lounging, griping, and joking in the lines astray
kicked their luggage along. But Alan felt an undercurrent of tension, like an
irritant in the air. Outside the line of store-fronts behind him a few isolated
men seemed to be handing out tracts. An airport attendant spoke to the nearest
man; be merely shrugged and moved a few doors down.
To distract
himself Alan picked up a Miami Herald from the next seat. It was surprisingly
thin. The international news occupied him for a while; he had seen none for
weeks. It too had a strange empty quality, even the bad news seemed to have
dried up. The African war which had been going on seemed to be over, or went
unreported. A trade summit meeting was haggling over grain and steel prices. He
found himself at the obituary pages, columns of close-set type dominated by the
photo of an unknown defunct ex-senator. Then his eye fell on two announcements
at the bottom of the page. One was too flowery for quick comprehension, but the
other stated in bold plain type:
THE PORSETTE FUNERAL HOME REGRETFULLY
ANNOUNCES
IT WILL NO LONGER ACCEPT FEMALE
CADAVERS
Slowly he
folded the paper, staring at it numbly. On the back was an item headed
Navigational Hazard Warning, in the shipping news. Without really taking it in,
he read:
AP/Nassau: The excursion liner Carib Swallow reached port under
tow today after striking an obstruction in the Gulf Stream off Cape Hatteras.
The obstruction was identified as part of a commercial trawler's seine floated
by female corpses. This confirms reports from Florida and the Gulf of the use
of such seines, some of them over a mile in length. Similar reports coming from
the Pacific coast and as far away as Japan indicate a growing hazard to
coastwise shipping.
Alan flung the
thing into the trash receptacle and sat rubbing his forehead and eyes. Thank
God he had followed his impulse to come home. He felt totally disoriented, as
though he had landed by error on another plane four and a half hours more to
wait. . .. At length he realized the stuff from Barney he had thrust in his
pocket, and pulled it out and smoothed it. The top item seemed to be from the
Ann Arbor News. Dr. Lillian Dash, together with several hundred other members
of her organization, had been arrested for demonstrating without a permit in
front of the White House. They had started a e in a garbage can, which was
considered particularly heinous. A number of women's groups had participated;
the total struck Alan as more like thousands than hundreds. Extraordinary
security precautions were being taken, despite the fact that the President was
out of town at the time.
The next item
had to be Barney's acerbic humor.
UP/Vatican City 19 June. Pope John IV today intimated that he does
not plan to comment officially on the so-called Pauline Purification cults
advocating the elimination of women as a means of justifying man to God. A
spokesman emphasized that the Church takes no position on these cults but
repudiates any doctrine involving a "challenge" to or from God to
reveal His further plans for man.
Cardinal Fazzoli, spokesman for the European Pauline movement, reaffirmed
his view that the Scriptures define woman as merely a temporary companion and
instrument of man. Women, he states, are nowhere defined as human, but merely
as a transitional expedient or state. "The time of transition to full
humanity is at hand," he concluded.
The next item
appeared to be a thin-paper Xerox from a recent issue of Science:
SUMMARY REPORT OF THE AD HOC
EMERGENCY COMMITTEE ON FEMICIDE
The recent worldwide though localized outbreaks of femicide appear
to represent a recurrence of similar outbreaks by groups or sects which are not
uncommon in world history in times of psychic stress. In this case the root
cause is undoubtedly the speed of social and technological change, augmented by
population pressure, and the spread and scope are aggravated by instantaneous
world communications, thus exposing more susceptible persons. It is not viewed
as a medical or epidemiological problem; no physical pathology has been found.
Rather it is more akin to the various manias which swept Europe in the
seventeenth century, e.g., the Dancing Manias, and, like them, should run its
course and disappear. The chiliastic cults which have sprung up around the
affected areas appear to be unrelated, having in common only the idea that a
new means of human reproduction will be revealed as a result of the
"purifying" elimination of women.
We recommend that (1) inflammatory and sensational reporting be
suspended; (2) refugee centers be set up and maintained for women escapees from
the focal areas; (3) containment of affected areas by military cordon be
continued and enforced; and (4) after a cooling-down period' and the subsidence
of the mania, qualified mental-health teams and appropriate professional
personnel go in to undertake rehabilitation.
SUMMARY OF THE MINORITY
REPORT OF THE AD HOC COMMITTEE
The nine members signing this report agree that there is no
evidence for epidemiological contagion of femicide in the strict sense.
However, the geographical relation of the focal areas of outbreak strongly
suggest that they cannot be dismissed as purely psychosocial phenomena. The
initial outbreaks have occurred around the globe near the 30th parallel, the
area of principal atmospheric downflow of upper winds coming from the
Intertropical Convergence Zone. An agent or condition in the upper equatorial
atmosphere would thus be expected to reach ground level along the 30th
parallel, with certain seasonal variations. One principal variation is that the
downflow moves north over the East Asian continent during the late winter
months, and those areas south of it (Arabia, Western India, parts of North
Africa) have in fact been free of outbreaks until recently, when the downflow
zone moved south. A similar downflow occurs in the Southern Hemisphere, and
outbreaks have been reported along the 30th·parallel running through Pretoria
and Alice Springs, Australia. (Information from Argentina is currently
unavailable.)
This geographical correlation cannot be dismissed, and it is
therefore urged that an intensified search for a physical cause be instituted.
It is also urgently recommended that the Sate of spread from known focal points
be correlated with wind conditions. A watch for similar outbreaks along the
secondary down-welling zones at 600 north and south should be kept.
(signed for the minority)
Barnhard Braithwaite
Alan grinned
reminiscently at his old friend's name, which seemed to restore normalcy and
stability to the world. It looked as if Barney was on to something, too,
despite the prevalence of horses' asses. He frowned, puzzling it out.
Then his face
slowly changed as he thought how it would be, going home to Anne. In a few
short hours his arms would be around her, the tall, secretly beautiful body
that had come to obsess him. Theirs had been a late-blooming love. They'd
married, he supposed now, out of friendship, even out of friends' pressure.
Everyone said they were made for each other, he big and chunky and blond, she
willowy brunette; both shy, highly controlled, cerebral types. For the first
few years the friendship had held, but sex hadn't been all that much.
Conventional necessity. Politely reassuring each other, privately—he could say
it now—disappointing.
But then, when
Amy was a toddler, something had happened. A miraculous inner portal of
sensuality had slowly opened to them, a liberation into their own secret
unsuspected heaven of fully physical bliss. . .. Jesus, but it had been a
wrench when the Colombia thing had come up. Only their absolute sureness of
each other had made him take it. And now, to be about to have her again, trebly
desirable from the spice of
separation—feeling-seeing-hearing-smelling-grasping. He shifted in his seat to
conceal his body's excitement, half mesmerized by fantasy.
And Amy would
be there, too; he grinned at the memory of that prepubescent little body
plastered against him. She was going to be a handful, all right. His manhood
understood Amy a lot better than her mother did; no cerebral phase for Amy . .
. But Anne, his exquisite shy one, with whom he'd found the way into the almost
unendurable transports of the flesh . . . First the conventional greeting, he
thought; the news, the unspoken, savored, mounting excitement behind their
eyes; the half touches; then the seeking of their own room, the falling
clothes, the caresses, gentle at first—the flesh, the nakedness-the delicate
teasing, the grasp, the first thrust—
A terrible
alarm bell went off in his head. Exploded from his dream, he stared around,
then finally down at his hands. What was
he doing with his open clasp knife in his fist?
Stunned, he
felt for the last shreds of his fantasy, and realized that the tactile
images had not been of caresses, but of
a frail neck strangling in his fist, the thrust had been the plunge of a blade
seeking vitals. In his arms, legs, phantasms of striking and trampling bones
cracking. And Amy==
O God, Oh
God--
Not sex, blood
lust.
That was what
he had been dreaming. The sex was there, but it was driving some engine of
death.
Numbly he put
the knife away, thinking only over and over, it’s got me. It’s got me. Whatever it is, it’s got me. I can’t go home.
After an
unknown time he got up and made his way to the United counter to turn in his
ticket. The line was long. As he waited, his mind cleared a little. What could
he do, here in Miami? Wouldn’t it be better to get back to Ann Arbor and turn
himself in to Barney? Barney could help him, if anyone could. Yes, that was his
best. But first he had to warn Anne..
The connection
took even longer this time. When Anne finally answerd he found himself blurint
unintelligibly, it took awhile to make her understand he wasn’t talking about a
plane delay.
“I tell you,
I’ve caught it. Listen, Anne, for God’s sake. If I should come to the house
don’t let me come near you. I mean it. I mean it. I’m going to the lab, but I
might lose control and try to get to you. Is Barney there?”
“Yes, but
darling--”
“Listen. Maybe
he can fix me, maybe this’ll wear off. But I’m not safe. Anne, Anne, I’d kill
you, can you understand? Get a--get a weapon. I’ll try not to come to the
house. But if I do, don’t let me get near you. Or Amy. It’s a sickness, it’s
real. Treat me--treat me like a fducking wilde animal. Anne, say you
understand, say you’ll do it.”
They were both
crying when he hung up.
He went
shaking back to sit and wait. After a time his head seemed to clear a little
more. Doctor, try to think. The first
thing he thought of was to take the loathsome knife and throw it down a trash
slot. As he did so he realized there was one more piece of Barney’s material in
his pocket. He uncrumpled it; it seemed to be a clipping from Nature. At the top was Barney's scrawl:
"Only guy making sense. UK infected now Oslo, Copenhagen out of
communication. Damn fools still won't listen: Stay put."
Communication
from Professor Ian MacIntyre, Glasgow Univ.
A potential difficulty for our species has always been implicit in
the close linkage between the behavioral expression of aggression/predation and
sexual reproduction in the male. This close linkage involves (a) many of the
same neuromuscular pathways which are utilized both in predatory and sexual
pursuit, grasping, mounting etc., and (b) similar sites of adrenergic arousal
which are activated in both. The same linkage is seen in the males of many
other species; in some, the expression of aggression and copulation alternate
or even coexist; an all-too-familiar example being the common house cat. Males
of many species bite; claw, bruise, tread, or otherwise assault receptive
female during the act of intercourse; indeed, in some species the male attack
is necessary for female ovulation to occur.
In many if not all species it is the aggressive behavior which
appears first, and then changes to copulatory behavior when the appropriate
signal is presented .(e.g. the three-tined stickleback and the European robin).
Lacking the inhibiting signal, the male's fighting response continues and the
female is attacked or driven off.
It seems therefore appropriate to speculate that the present
crisis might be caused by some substance, perhaps at the viral or enzymatic
level, which effects failure of the switching or triggering function in the
higher primates. (Note: Zoo gorillas and chimpanzee have recently been observed
to attack or destroy their mates; rhesus not.) Such a dysfunction could be
expressed by the failure of mating behavior to modify or supervene over the
aggressive/predatory response; i.e., sexual stimulation would produce attack
only, the stimulation discharging itself through the destruction of the
stimulating object.
In this connection it might be noted that exactly this condition
is a commonplace of male functional pathology, in those cases where murder
occurs as a response to, and apparent completion of, sexual desire.
It should be emphasized that the aggression/copulation linkage
discussed here is specific to the male; the female response (e.g., lordotic
reflex) being of a different nature.
Alan sat
holding the crumpled sheet a long time; the dry, stilted Scottish phrases
seemed to help clear his head, spite the sense of brooding tension all around
him. Well, if pollution or whatever had produced some substance, it would,
presumably, be countered, neutralized. Very very carefully, he let himself
consider his life with Anne, his sexuality. Yes; much of their loveplay could
be viewed as genitalized, sexually gentled savagery. Play-predation . . . He
turned his mind quickly away. Some writer's phrase occurred to him: ''The panic
element in all sex" Who? Fritz Leiber? The violation of social distance,
maybe; another threatening element. Whatever, it's our weak link, he thought.
Our vulnerability . . . The dreadful feeling of rightness he had experienced
when he found himself knife in hand, fantasizing violence, came pack to him. As
though it was the right, the only way. Was that what Barney's budworms felt
when they mated with their females wrong-end-to?
At long
length, he became aware of body need and sought a toilet. The place was empty,
except for what he took to be a heap of clothes blocking the door of the far
stall. Then he saw the red-brown pool in which it lay, and bluish mounds of
bare, thin buttocks. He backed out, not breathing, and fled into the nearest
crowd, knowing he was not the first to have done so.
Of course. Any
sexual drive. Boys, men, too.
At the next
washroom he watched to see men enter and leave normally before he ventured in.
Afterward he
returned to sit, waiting, repeating over and over to himself: Go to the lab.
Don't go home. Go to the lab. Don’t go home. Go straight to the lab. Three more
hours; he sat numbly at 26o N, 810 W, breathing,
breathing . . .
Dear Diary. Big scene tonite, Daddy came home!!! Only he acted so
funny, he had the taxi wait and just the doorway, he wouldn't touch me or let
us come near him. (I mean funny weird, not funny ha ha.) He said, I have
something to tell you, this is get worse not better. I'm going to sleep in the
lab but I want you to get out, Anne, Anne, I can't trust myself. First thing in
the morning you both get on for Martha's and stay there. So I thought he had to
be joking, I mean with the dance next week and Aunt Martha lives in Whitehorse
where there's nothing nothing nothing. So I was yelling and Mother was yelling
and Daddy was groaning, Go now! And then he started crying. Crying!!! So I
realized, wow, this is serious, and I started to go over to him but Mother
yanked me back and then I saw she had this big knife! And she shoved me in back
of her and started crying too: Oh Alan, Oh Alan, like she was insane. So I
said, Daddy, I'll never leave you, it felt like the perfect thing to say. And
it was thrilling, he looked at me real sad and deep like I was a grown-up while
Mother ruined it raving. Alan the child is mad, darling go. So he ran out of
the door yelling. Be gone, Take the car, get out before I come back.
Oh I forgot to say I was wearing what but my gooby with my
curltites still on, wouldn't you know of all the shitty luck, how could I have
known such a scene was ahead we never know life's cruel whimsy. And Mother is
dragging out suitcases yelling, Pack your things hurry! So she's going I guess
but I am not not going to spend the fall sitting in Aunt Martha’s grain silo
and lose the dance and all my summer credits. And Daddy was trying to
communicate with us, right? I think their relationship is obsolete. So when she
goes upstairs I am splitting. I am going to go over to the lab and see Daddy.
Oh PS Diane tore my yellow jeans she promised me I could use her
pink ones ha-ha that'll be the day.
*
* *
I ripped that
Page out of Amy's diary when I heard the squad car coming. I never opened her
diary before but when I found she'd gone I looked. . . . Oh, my darling little
girl. She went to him, my little girl, my poor little fool child. Maybe if I'd
taken time to explain, maybe—
Excuse me,
Barney. The stuff is wearing off, the shots they gave me. I didn't feel
anything. I mean, I knew somebody's daughter went to see her father and he
killed her. And cut his throat. But it didn't mean anything.
Alan's note,
they gave me that but then they took it away. Why did they have to do that! His
last handwriting, the last words he wrote before his hand, picked up the,
before he—
I remember it.
“Sudden and light as that, the bonds gave
way. And we learned of finalities besides the grave. The bonds of our humanity
have broken, we’re finished. I love—”
I'm all right,
Barney, really. Who wrote that, Robert Frost? The bonds gave. . . . Oh, he said, tell Barney: The terrible rightness. What does that
mean?
You can't
answer that, Barney dear. I'm just writing this to stay sane, I’ll put it in
your hidey-hole, Thank you, 'thank you, Barney dear. Even as blurry as I was, I
knew it was you. All the time you were cutting off my hair and rubbing dirt on
my face, I knew it was right because it was you. Barney, I never thought of you
as those horrible words you said. You were always Dear Barney.
By the time
the stuff wore off I had done everything you said, the gas, the groceries. Now
I'm here in your cabin. With those clothes you made me put on—I guess I do look
like a boy, the gas man called me "Mister."
I still can't really realize, I have to stop myself from rushing
back. But you saved my life, I know that. The last trip in I got a paper, I saw
where they bombed the Apostle Islands refuge. And it had about those three
women stealing the Air Force plane and bombing Dallas, too. Of course they shot
them down, over the Gulf. Isn’t strange how we do nothing? Just get killed by
ones and twos. Or more, now they've started on the refugees. . . . Like
hypnotized rabbits. We're a toothless race.
Do you know I
never said "we" meaning women before? "We" was always me
and Alan, and Amy of course. Being killed selectively encourages group
identification. . . . You see how sane-headed I am.
But I still
can't really realize.
My first trip
in was for salt and kerosene. I went to that little Red Deer store and got my
stuff from the old man in the back, as you told me—you see, I remembered! He
called me "Boy" but I think maybe he suspects. He knows I'm staying
at your cabin.
Anyway, some
men and boys came in the front. They were all so normal, laughing and kidding.
I just couldn't believe, Barney. In fact I started to go out past them when I
heard one of them say, "Heinz saw an angel." An angel. So I stopped
and listened. They said it was big and sparkly. Coming to see if man is
carrying out God's will, one of them said. And he said, Moosenee is now a
liberated zone, and all up by Hudson Bay. I turned and got out the back, fast.
The old man had heard them, too. He said to me quietly, I’ll miss the kids.
Hudson Bay,
Barney, that means it's coming from the north too, doesn't it? That must be
about 600. But I have to go back once again, to get some fishhooks.
I can't live on bread. Last week I found a deer some poacher had killed, just
the head and legs.. I made a stew. It was a doe. Her eyes; I wonder if mine
look like that now.
I went to get
the fishhooks today. It was bad, I can't ever go back. There were some men in
front again, but they were different. Mean and tense. No boys. And there was a
new sign out in front, I couldn't see it; maybe it says Liberated Zone, too.
The old man
gave me the hooks quick and whispered to me, "Boy, them woods'll be full
of hunters next week." I almost ran out.
About a mile
down the road a blue pickup started to chase me. I guess he wasn’t from around
there, I ran the VW into a logging draw and he roared on by. After a long while
I drove out and came on back, but I left the car about a mile from here and
hiked in. It’s surprising how hard it is to pile enough brush to hide a yellow
VW.
Barney, I
can't stay here. I'm eating perch raw so nobody will see my smoke, but those
hunters will be coming through. I'm going to move my sleeping bag out to the
swamp by that big rock, I don't think many people go there.
Since the last
lines I moved out. It feels safer. Oh, Barney, how did this happen?
Fast, that's
how. Six months ago I was Dr. Anne Alstein. Now I'm a widow and bereaved
mother, dirty and hungry, squatting in a swamp in mortal fear. Funny if I'm the
last woman left alive on Earth. I guess the last one around here, anyway. Maybe
some are holed up in the Himalayas, or sneaking through the wreck of New York
City. How can we last?
We can't.
And I can't
survive the winter here, Barney. It gets to 400 below. I'd have to
have a fire, they'd see the smoke. Even if I worked my way south, the woods end
in a couple hundred miles. I'd be potted like a duck. No. No use. Maybe
somebody is trying something somewhere, but it won't reach here in time . . .
and what do I have to live for?
No. I’ll just
make a good end, say up on that rock where I can see the stars. After I go back
and leave this for you. I'11 wait to see the beautiful color in the trees one
last time.
Good-bye,
dearest dearest Barney.
I know what
I'll scratch for an epitaph.
HERE LIES THE SECOND MEANEST PRIMATE ON
EARTH
I guess nobody
will ever read this, unless I get the nerve and energy to take it back to
Barney's. Probably won't. Leave it in a Baggie, I have one here; maybe Barney
will come and look. I'm up on the big rock now. The moon is going to rise soon,
I'll do it then. Mosquitoes, be patient. You'll have all you want.
The thing I
have to write down is that I saw an angel, too. This morning. It was big and
sparkly, like the man said; like a Christmas tree without the tree. But I knew
it was real because the frogs stopped croaking and two blue jays. gave alarm
calls. That’s important. It was really
there.
I watched it,
sitting under my rock. It didn’t move much. It sort of bent over and picked up
something, leaves or twigs. I couldn’t see. Then it did something with them
around its middle, like putting them into an invisible sample pocket.
Let me
repeat—it was there. Barney, if you’re reading this, there are things here. And
I think they’ve done whatever it is to us. Made us kill ourselves off.
Why? Well,
it’s a nice place, if it wasn’t for people. How do you get rid of people?
Bombs, death-rays—all very primitive. Leave a big mess. Destroy everythipng,
craters, radioactivity, ruin the place.
This way
there’s no muss, no fuss. Just like what did to the screwfly. Pinpoint the weak
link, wait a bit while we do it for them. Only a few bones around, make good
fertilizer.
Barney dear,
good-bye. I saw it. It was there.
But it wasn’t
an angel.
I think I saw a real estate agent.