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FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID |
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Chapter 27: Phil Westerburg, the Los Angeles Police Agency chief deputy coroner, said to General Felix Buckman, his superior, "I can explain the drug best this way. You haven't heard of it because it isn't in use yet; she must have ripped it off from the academy's special-activities lab." He sketched on a piece of paper. "Time-binding is a function of the brain. It's a structuralization of perception and orientation." "Why did it kill her?" Buckman asked. It was late and his head hurt. He wished the day would end; he wished everyone and everything would go away. "An overdose?" he demanded. "We have no way of determining as yet what would constitute an overdose with KR-3. It's currently being tested on detainee volunteers at the San Bernardino forced-labor camp, but so far" - Westerburg continued to sketch - "anyhow, as I was explaining. Time-binding is a function of the brain and goes on as long as the brain is receiving input. Now, we know that the brain can't function if it can't bind space as well ... but as to why, we don't know yet. Probably it has to do with the instinct to stabilize reality in such a fashion that sequences can be ordered in terms of before-and-after - that would be time - and, more importantly, space-occupying, as with a three-dimensional object as compared to, say, a drawing of that object." He showed Buckman his sketch. It meant nothing to Buckman; he stared at it blankly and wondered where, this late at night, he could get some Darvon for his headache. Had Alys had any? She had squirreled so many pills. Westerburg continued, "Now, one aspect of space is that any given unit of space excludes all other given units; if a thing is there it can't be here. Just as in time if an event comes before, it can't also come after." Buckman said, "Couldn't this wait until tomorrow? You originally said it would take twenty- four hours to develop a report on the exact toxin involved. Twenty-four hours is satisfactory to me." "But you requested that we speed up the analysis," Westerburg said. "You wanted the autopsy to begin immediately. At two-ten this afternoon, when I was first officially called in." "Did I?" Buckman said. Yes, he thought, I did. Before the marshals can get their story together. "Just don't draw pictures," he said. "My eyes hurt. Just tell me." "The exclusiveness of space, we've learned, is only a function of the brain as it handles perception. It regulates data in terms of mutually restrictive space units. Millions of them. Trillions, theoretically, in fact. But in itself, space is not exclusive. In fact, in itself, space does not exist at all." "Meaning?" Westerburg, refraining from sketching, said, "A drug such as KR-3 breaks down the brain's ability to exclude one unit of space out of another. So here versus there is lost as the brain tries to handle perception. It can't tell if an object has gone away or if it's still there. When this occurs the brain can no longer exclude alternative spatial vectors. It opens up the entire range of spatial variation. The brain can no longer tell which objects exist and which are only latent, unspatial possibilities. So as a result, competing spatial corridors are opened, into which the garbled percept system enters, and a whole new universe appears to the brain to be in the process of creation." "I see," Buckman said. But actually he did not either see or care. I only want to go home, he thought. And forget this. "That's very important," Westerburg said earnestly. "KR- 3 is a major breakthrough. Anyone affected by it is forced to perceive irreal universes, whether they want to or not. As I said, trillions of possibilities are theoretically all of a sudden real; chance enters and the person's percept system chooses one possibility out of all those presented to it. It has to choose, because if it didn't, competing universes would overlap, and the concept of space itself would vanish. Do you follow me?" Seated a short way off, at his own desk, Herb Maime said, "He means that the brain seizes on the spatial universe nearest at hand." "Yes," Westerburg said. "You've read the classified lab report on KR-3, have you, Mr. Maime?" "I read it a little over an hour ago," Herb Maime said. "Most of it was too technical for me to grasp. But I did notice that its effects are transitory. The brain finally reestablishes contact with the actual space-time objects that it formerly perceived." "Right," Westerburg said, nodding. "But during the interval in which the drug is active the subject exists, or thinks he exists -" "There's no difference," Herb said, "between the two. That's the way the drug works; it abolishes that distinction." "Technically," Westerburg said. "But to the subject an actualized environment envelopes him, one which is alien to the former one that he always experienced, and he operates as if he had entered a new world. A world with changed aspects ... the amount of change being determined by how great the so-to-speak distance is between the space-time world he formerly perceived and the new one he's forced to function in." "I'm going home," Buckman said. "I can't stand any more of this." He rose to his feet. "Thanks, Westerburg," he said, automatically extending his hand to the chief deputy coroner. They shook. "Put together an abstract for me," he said to Herb Maime, "and I'll look it over in the morning." He started off, his gray topcoat over his arm. As he always carried it. "Do you now see what happened to Taverner?" Herb said. Halting, Buckman said, "No." "He passed over to a universe in which he didn't exist. And we passed over with him because we're objects of his percept-system. And then when the drug wore off he passed back again. What actually locked him back here was nothing he took or didn't take but her death. So then of course his file came to us from Data Central." "Good night," Buckman said. He left the office, passed through the great, silent room of spotless metal desks, all alike, all cleared at the end of the day, including McNulty's, and then at last found himself in the ascent tube, rising to the roof. *** The night air, cold and clear, made his head ache terribly; he shut his eyes and gritted his teeth. And then he thought, I could get an analgesic from Phil Westerburg. There's probably fifty kinds in the academy's pharmacy, and Westerburg has the keys. Taking the descent tube he rearrived on the fourteenth floor, returned to his suite of offices, where Westerburg and Herb Maime still sat conferring. To Buckman, Herb said, "I want to explain one thing I said. About us being objects of his percept system." "We're not," Buckman said. Herb said, "We are and we aren't. Taverner wasn't the one who took the KR-3. It was Alys. Taverner, like the rest of us, became a datum in your sister's percept system and got dragged across when she passed into an alternate construct of coordinates. She was very involved with Taverner as a wish-fulfillment performer, evidently, and had run a fantasy number in her head for some time about knowing him as an actual person. But although she did manage to accomplish this by taking the drug, he and we at the same time remained in our own universe. We occupied two space corridors at the same time, one real, one irreal. One is an actuality; one is a latent possibility among many, spatialized temporarily by the KR-3. But just temporarily. For about two days." "That's long enough," Westerburg said, "to do enormous physical harm to the brain involved. Your sister's brain, Mr. Buckman, was probably not so much destroyed by toxicity but by a high and sustained overload. We may find that the ultimate cause of death was irreversible injury to cortical tissue, a speed-up of normal neurological decay ... her brain so to speak died of old age over an interval of two days." "Can I get some Darvon from you?" Buckman said to Westerburg. "The pharmacy is locked up," Westerburg said. "But you have the key." Westerburg said, "I'm not .supposed to use it when the pharmacist isn't on duty." "Make an exception," Herb said sharply. "This time." Westerburg moved off, sorting among his keys. "If the pharmacist was there," Buckman said, after a time, "he wouldn't need the key." "This whole planet," Herb said, "is run by bureaucrats." He eyed Buckman. "You're too sick to take anymore. After he gets you the Darvon, go home." "I'm not sick," Buckman said. "I just don't feel well." "But don't stick around here. I'll finish up. You start to leave and then you come back." "I'm like an animal," Buckman said. "Like a laboratory rat." The phone on his big oak desk buzzed. "Is there any chance it's one of the marshals?" Buckman said. "I can't talk to them tonight; it'll have to wait." Herb picked up the phone. Listened. Then, cupping his hand over the receiver, he said, "It's Taverner. Jason Taverner." "I'll talk to him. " Buckman took the phone from Herb Maime, said into it, "Hello, Taverner. It's late." In his ear, Taverner said tinnily, "I want to give myself up. I'm at the apartment of Heather Hart. We're waiting here together." To Herb Maime, Buckman said, "He wants to give himself up." "Tell him to come down here," Herb said. "Come down here," Buckman said into the phone. "Why do you want to give up?" he said. "We'll kill you in the end, you miserable murdering motherfucker; you know that. Why don't you run?" "Where?" Taverner squeaked. "To one of the campuses. Go to Columbia. They're stabilized; they have food and water for a while." Taverner said, "I don't want to be hunted anymore." "To live is to be hunted," Buckman rasped. "Okay, Taverner," he said. "Come down here and we'll book you. Bring the Hart woman with you so we can record her testimony." You goddamn fool, he thought. Giving yourself up. "Cut your testicles off while you're at it. You stupid bastard." His voice shook. "I want to clear myself," Taverner's voice echoed thinly in Buckman's ear. "When you show up here," Buckman said, "I'll kill you with my own gun. Resisting arrest, you degenerate. Or whatever we want to call it. We'll call it what we feel like. Anything." He hung up the phone. "He's coming down here to be killed," he said to Herb Maime. "You picked him. You can unpick him if you want. Clear him. Send him back to his phonograph records and his silly TV show." "No. " Buckman shook his head. Westerburg appeared with two pink capsules and a paper cup of water. "Darvon compound," he said, presenting them to Buckman. "Thank you" Buckman swallowed the pills, drank the water, crushed the paper cup and dropped it into his shredder. Quietly, the teeth of the shredder spun, then ceased. Silence. "Go home," Herb said to him. "Or, better yet, go to a motel, a good downtown motel for the night. Sleep late to morrow; I'll handle the marshals when they call." "I have to meet Taverner." "No you don't. I'll book him. Or a desk sergeant can book him. Like any other criminal." "Herb," Buckman said, "I intend to kill the guy, as I said on the phone." Going to his desk he unlocked the bottom drawer, got out a cedar box, set it on the desk. He opened the box and from it brought forth a single-shot Derringer twenty-two pistol. He loaded it with a hollow-nosed shell, half cocked it, held it with its muzzle pointed at the ceiling. For safety's sake. Habit. "Let's see that," Herb said. Buckman handed it to him. "Made by Colt," he said. "Colt acquired the dies and patents. I forget when." "This is a nice gun," Herb said, weighing it, balancing it in his hand. "A fine handgun." He gave it back. "But a twenty-two slug is too small. You'd have to get him exactly between the eyes. He'd have to be standing directly in front of you." He placed his hand on Buckman's shoulder. "Use a thirty-eight special or a forty-five, " he said. "Okay? Will you do that?" "You know who owns this gun?" Buckman said. "Alys. She kept it here because she said if she kept it at home she might use it on me sometime during an argument, or late at night when she gets-got-depressed. But it's not a woman's gun. Derringer made women's guns, but this isn't one of them." "Did you get it for her?" "No," Buckman said. "She found it in a pawnshop down in the Watts area. Twenty-five bucks she paid for it. Not a bad price, considering its condition." He glanced up, into Herb's face. "We really have to kill him. The marshals will crucify me if we don't hang it on him. And I've got to stay at policy level." "I'll take care of it," Herb said. "Okay." Buckman nodded. "I'll go home." He placed the pistol back in its box, back on its red-velvet cushion, closed the box, then opened it once more and dumped the twenty- two bullet from the barrel. Herb Maime and Phil Westerburg watched. "The barrel breaks to the side in this model," Buckman said. "It's unusual." "You better get a black-and-gray to take you home," Herb said. "The way you feel and with what's happened you shouldn't be driving." "I can drive," Buckman said. "I can always drive. What I can't do properly is kill a man with a twenty-two slug who's standing directly in front of me. Somebody has to do it for me." "Good night," Herb said quietly. "Good night." Buckman left them, made his way through the various offices, the deserted suites and chambers of the academy, once more to the ascent tube. The Darvon had already begun to lessen the pain in his head; he felt grateful for that. Now I can breathe the night air, he thought. Without suffering. The door of the ascent tube slid open. There stood Jason Taverner. And, with him, an attractive woman. Both of them looked frightened and pale. Two tall, handsome, nervous people. Obviously sixes. Defeated sixes. "You are under police arrest," Buckman said. "Here are your rights. Anything you say may be held against you. You have a right to counsel and if you cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for you. You have a right to be tried by a jury, or you can waive that right and be tried by a judge appointed by the Police Academy of Los Angeles City and County. Do you understand what I have just said?" "I came here to clear myself," Jason Taverner said. "My staff will take your depositions," Buckman said. "Go into the blue-colored offices over there where you were taken before." He pointed. "Do you see him in there? The man in the single-breasted suit with the yellow tie?" "Can I clear myself?" Jason Taverner said. "I admit to being in the house when she died, but I didn't have anything to do with it. I went upstairs and found her in the bathroom. She was getting some Thorazine for me. To counteract the mescaline she gave me." "He saw her as a skeleton," the woman - evidently Heather Hart - said. "Because of the mescaline. Can't he get off on the grounds that he was under the influence of a powerful hallucinogenic chemical? Doesn't that legally clear him? He had no control over what he did, and I didn't have anything to do with it at all. I didn't even know she was dead until I read tonight's paper." "In some states it might," Buckman said. "But not here," the woman said wanly. Comprehendingly. Emerging from his office, Herb Maime sized up the situation and declared, "I'll book him and take their statements, Mr. Buckman. You go ahead on home as we agreed." "Thank you," Buckman said. "Where's my topcoat?" He glanced around for it. "God, it's cold," he said. "They turn the heat off at night," he explained to Taverner and the Hart woman. "I'm sorry." "Good night," Herb said to him. Buckman entered the ascent tube and pressed the button that closed the door. He still did not have his topcoat. Maybe I should take a black-and-gray, he said to himself. Get some junior-grade eager cadet type to drive me home, or, like Herb said, go to one of the good downtown motels. Or one of the new soundproof hotels by the airport. But then my quibble would be here and I wouldn't have it to drive to work tomorrow morning. The cold air and the darkness of the roof made him wince. Even the Darvon can't help me, he thought. Not completely. I can still feel it. He unlocked the door of his quibble, got inside and slammed the door after him. Colder in here than out there, he thought. Jesus. He started up the engine and turned on the heater. Frigid wind blew up at him from the floor vents. He began to shake. I'll feel better when I can get home, he thought. Looking at his wristwatch, he saw that it was two-thirty. No wonder it's so cold, he thought. Why did I pick Taverner? he asked himself. Out of a planet of six billion people ... this one specific man who never harmed anyone, never did anything except let his file come to the attention of the authorities. That's it right there, he realized. Jason Taverner let himself come to our attention, and, as they say, once come to the authorities' attention, never completely forgotten. But I can unpick him, he thought, as Herb pointed out. No. Again it had to be no. The die was cast from the beginning. Before any of us even laid hands on it. Taverner, he thought, you were doomed from the start. From your first act upward. We play roles, Buckman thought. We occupy positions, some small, some large. Some ordinary, some strange. Some outlandish and bizarre. Some visible, some dim or not visible at all. Jason Taverner's role was large and visible at the end, and it was at the end that the decision had to be made. If he could have stayed as he started out: one small man without proper ID cards, living in a ratty, broken-down, slum hotel - if he could have remained that he might have gotten away ... or at the very worst wound up in a forced-labor camp. But Taverner did not elect to do that. Some irrational will within him made him want to appear, to be visible, to be known. All right, Jason Taverner, Buckman thought, you are known, again, as you were once before, but better known now, known in a new way. In a way that serves higher ends - ends you know nothing about, but must accept without understanding. As you go to your grave your mouth will be still open, asking the question, "What did I do?" You will be buried that way: with your mouth still open. And I could never explain it to you, Buckman thought. Except to say: don't come to the attention of the authorities. Don't ever interest us. Don't make us want to know more about you. Someday your story, the ritual and shape of your downfall, may be made public, at a remote future time when it no longer matters. When there are no more forced-labor camps and no more campuses surrounded by rings of police carrying rapid-fire submachine guns and wearing gas masks that make them look like great-snouted, huge-eyed root-eaters, some kind of noxious lower animal. Someday there may be a post mortem inquiry and it will be learned that you in fact did no harm - did nothing, actually, but become noticed. The real, ultimate truth is that despite your fame and your great public following you are expendable, he thought. And I am not. That is the difference between the two of us. Therefore you must go and I remain. His ship floated on, up into the band of nighttime stars. And to himself he sang quietly, seeking to look ahead, to see forward into time, to the world of his home, of music and thought and love, to books, ornate snuffboxes and rare stamps. To the blotting out, for a moment, of the wind that rushed about him as he drove on, a speck nearly lost in the night. There is beauty which will never be lost, he declared to himself; I will preserve it; I am one of those who cherishes it. And I abide. And that, in the final analysis, is all that matters. Tunelessly, he hummed to himself. And felt at last some meager heat as, finally, the standard police model quibble heater mounted below his feet began to function. Something dripped from his nose onto the fabric of his coat. My God, he thought in horror. I'm crying again. He put up his hand and wiped the greaselike wetness from his eyes. Who for? he asked himself. Alys? For Taverner? The Hart woman? Or for all of them? No, he thought. It's a reflex. From fatigue and worry. It doesn't mean anything. Why does a man cry? he wondered. Not like a woman; not for that. Not for sentiment. A man cries over the loss of something, something alive. A man can cry over a sick animal that he knows won't make it. The death of a child: a man can cry for that. But not because things are sad. A man, he thought, cries not for the future or the past but for the present. And what is the present, now? They are booking Jason Taverner back at the Police Academy building and he is telling them his story. Like everyone else, he has an account to give, an offering which makes clear his lack of guilt. Jason Taverner, as I fly this craft, is doing that right now. Turning the steering wheel, he sent his quibble in a long trajectory that brought it at last into an Immelmann; he made the craft fly back the way it had come, at no increase in speed, nor at any loss. He merely flew in the opposite direction. Back toward the academy. And yet still he cried. His tears became each moment denser and faster and deeper. I'm going the wrong way, he thought. Herb is right; I have to get away from there. All I can do there now is witness something I can no longer control. I am painted on, like a fresco. Dwelling in only two dimensions. I and Jason Taverner are figures in an old child's drawing. Lost in dust. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator and pulled back on the steering wheel of the quibble; it spluttered up, its engine missing and misfiring. The automatic choke is still closed, he said to himself. I should have revved it up for a while. It's still cold. Once more he changed direction. Aching, and with fatigue, he at last dropped his home route card into the control turret of the quibble's guiding section and snapped on the automatic pilot. I should rest, he said to himself. Reaching, he activated the sleep circuit above his head; the mechanism hummed and he shut his eyes. Sleep, artificially induced, came as always at once. He felt himself spiraling down into it and was glad. But then, almost at once, beyond the control of the sleep circuit, a dream came. Very clearly he did not want the dream. But he could not stop it. The countryside, brown and dry, in summer, where he had lived as a child. He rode a horse, and approaching him on his left a squad of horses nearing slowly. On the horses rode men in shining robes, each a different color; each wore a pointed helmet that sparkled in the sunlight. The slow, solemn knights passed him and as they traveled by he made out the face of one: an ancient marble face, a terribly old man with rippling cascades of white beard. What a strong nose he had. What noble features. So tired, so serious, so far beyond ordinary men. Evidently he was a king. Felix Buckman let them pass; he did not speak to them and they said nothing to him. Together, they all moved toward the house from which he had come. A man had sealed himself up inside the house, a man alone, Jason Taverner, in the silence and darkness, without windows, by himself from now on into eternity. Sitting, merely existing, inert. Felix Buckman continued on, out into the open countryside. And then he heard from behind him one dreadful single shriek. They had killed Taverner, and seeing them enter, sensing them in the shadows around him, knowing what they intended to do with him, Taverner had shrieked. Within himself Felix Buckman felt absolute and utter desolate grief. But in the dream he did not go back nor look back. There was nothing that could be done. No one could have stopped the posse of varicolored men in robes; they could not have been said no to. Anyhow, it was over. Taverner was dead. His heaving, disordered brain managed to spike a relay signal via minute electrodes to the sleep circuit. A voltage breaker clicked open, and a solid, disturbing tone awakened Buckman from his sleep and from his dream. God, he thought, and shivered. How cold it had become. How empty and alone he felt himself to be. The great, weeping grief within him, left from the dream, meandered in his breast, still disturbing him I've got to land, he said to himself. See some person. Talk to someone. I can't stay alone. Just for a second if I could - Shutting off the automatic pilot he steered the quibble toward a square of fluorescent light below: an all-night gas station. A moment later he bumpily landed before the gas pumps of the station, rolling to a stop near another quibble, parked and empty, abandoned. No one in it. Glare lit up the shape of a middle-aged black man in a topcoat, neat, colorful tie, his face aristocratic, each feature starkly outlined. The black man paced about across the oil streaked cement, his arms folded, an absent expression on his face. Evidently he waited for the robotrix attendant to finish fueling up his ship. The black man was neither impatient nor resigned; he merely existed, in remoteness and isolation and splendor, strong in his body, standing high, seeing nothing because there was nothing he cared to see. Parking his quibble, Felix Buckman shut off the motor, activated the door latch and lock, stepped stiffly out into the cold of night. He made his way toward the black man . The black man did not look at him. He kept his distance. He moved about, calmly, distantly. He did not speak. Into his coat pocket Felix Buckman reached with cold-shaken fingers; he found his ballpoint pen, plucked it out, groped in his pockets for a square of paper, any paper, a sheet from a memo pad. Finding it, he placed it on the hood of the black man's quibble. In the white, stark light of the service station Buckman drew on the paper a heart pierced by an arrow. Trembling with cold he turned toward the black man pacing and extended the piece of drawn-on paper to him. His eyes bulging briefly, in surprise, the black man grunted, accepted the piece of paper, held it by the light, examining it. Buckman waited. The black man turned the paper over, saw nothing on the back, once again scrutinized the heart with the arrow piercing it. He frowned, shrugged, then handed the paper back to Buckman and wandered on, his arms once again folded, his large back to the police general. The slip of paper fluttered away, lost. Silently, Felix Buckman returned to his own quibble, lifted open the door, squeezed inside behind the wheel. He turned on the motor, slammed the door, and flew up into the night sky, his ascent warning bulbs winking red before him and behind. They shut automatically off, then, and he droned along the line of the horizon, thinking nothing. The tears came once again. All of a sudden he spun the steering wheel; the quibble popped violently, bucked, leveled out laterally on a descending trajectory; moments later he once again glided to a stop in the hard glare beside the parked, empty quibble, the pacing black man, the fuel pumps. Buckman braked to a stop, shut off his engine, stepped creakingly out. The black man was looking at him. Buckman walked toward the black man. The black man did not retreat; he stood where he was. Buckman reached him, held out his arms and seized the black man, enfolded him in them, and hugged him. The black man grunted in surprise. And dismay. Neither man said anything. They stood for an instant and then Buckman let the black man go, turned, walked shakingly back to his quibble. "Wait," the black man said. Buckman revolved to face him. Hesitating, the black man stood shivering and then said, "Do you know how to get to Ventura? Up on air route thirty?" He waited. Buckman said nothing. "It's fifty or so miles north of here," the black man said. Still Buckman said nothing. "Do you have a map of this area?" the black man asked. "No," Buckman said. "I'm sorry." "I'll ask the gas station," the black man said, and smiled a little. Sheepishly. "It was - nice meeting you. What's your name?" The black man waited a long moment. "Do you want to tell me?" "I have no name," Buckman said. "Not right now." He could not really bear to think of it, at this time . "Are you an official of some kind? Like a greeter? Or from the L.A. Chamber of Commerce? I've had dealings with them and they're all right." "No," Buckman said. "I'm an individual. Like you." "Well, I have a name," the black man said. He deftly reached into his inner coat pocket, brought out a small stiff card, which he passed to Buckman. "Montgomery L. Hopkins is the handle. Look at the card. Isn't that a good printing job? I like the letters raised like that. Fifty dollars a thousand it cost me; I got a special price because of an introductory offer not to be repeated." The card had beautiful great embossed black letters on it. "I manufacture inexpensive biofeedback headphones of the analog type. They sell retail for under a hundred dollars." "Come and visit me," Buckman said. "Call me," the black man said. Slowly and firmly, but also a little loudly, he said. "These places, these coin-operated robot gas stations, are downers late at night. Sometime later on we can talk more. Where it's friendly. I can sympathize and understand how you're feeling, when it happens that places like this get you on a bummer. A lot of times I get gas on my way home from the factory so I won't have to stop late. I go out on a lot of night calls for several reasons. Yes, I can tell you're feeling down at the mouth - you know, depressed. That's why you handed me that note which I'm afraid I didn't flash on at the time but do now, and then you wanted to put your arms around me, you know, like you did, like a child would, for a second. I've had that sort of inspiration, or rather call it impulse, from time to time during my life. I'm forty-seven now. I understand. You want to not be by yourself late at night, especially when it's unseasonably chilly like it is right now. Yes, I agree completely, and now you don't exactly know what to say because you did something suddenly out of irrational impulse without thinking through to the final consequences. But it's okay; I can dig it. Don't worry about it one damn bit. You must drop over. You'll like my house. It's very mellow. You can meet my wife and our kids. Three in all." "I will," Buckman said. "I'll keep your card." He got out his wallet, pushed the card into it. "Thank you." "I see that my quibble's ready," the black man said. "I was low on oil, too." He hesitated, started to move away, then returned and held out his hand. Buckman shook it briefly. "Goodbye," the black man said. Buckman watched him go; the black man paid the gas station, got into his slightly battered quibble, started it up, and lifted off into the darkness. As he passed above Buckman the black man raised his right hand from the steering wheel and waved in salutation. Good night, Buckman thought as he silently waved back with cold-bitten fingers. Then he reentered his own quibble, hesitated, feeling numb, waited, then, seeing nothing, slammed his door abruptly and started up his engine. A moment later he had reached the sky. Flow, my tears, he thought. The first piece of abstract music ever written. John Dowland in his Second Lute Book in 1600. I'll play it on that big new quad phonograph of mine when I get home. Where it can remind me of Alys and all the rest of them. Where there will be a symphony and a fire and it will all be warm. I will go get my little boy. Early tomorrow I'll fly down to Florida and pick up Barney. Have him with me from now on. The two of us together. No matter what the consequences. But now there won't be any consequences; it's all over. It's safe. Forever. His quibble crept across the night sky. Like some wounded, half-dissolved insect. Carrying him home. |