George Martin - Deuces Down

“Ah, now, Cap’n, you don’t be needing to waste your time with that,” Cody protested hurriedly. He clambered down from the top of the cabin to stand next to Caitlyn. The spotlight widened as he moved, then narrowed again. Caitlyn lifted her arm, squinting into the light. “The truth be, Cap’n, I’m not exactly fishing. I was taking Caitlyn here for a bit of a ride, and I suppose I wasn’t paying as much attention to the instruments as I might be, if you take my drift. You’re a married man too, are you not, Cap’n? So I expect you understand. Do you think I’d be trying to smuggle something over in this puttering slow thing?”

Cody’s arm was around her, and she could smell the odor of rotting fish. But it was easy to smile… “I’d hate for something like this to get back to my missus,” Cody said.

Caitlyn could hear conversation, then a burst of rough laughter and someone’s voice saying audibly, “She’s missing a nose if she’s shagging the Codman…” The spotlight snapped off. Afterimages danced purple and yellow in Caitlyn’s vision. “Turn that rustbucket around, then,” Blane’s voice called loudly. “And next time, keep it closer to home.”

Cody waved; the patrol boat’s engines coughed and then roared as the prow lifted and the props churned the water to white froth. The lights receded, heading back toward Ballycastle. Cody went back to the wheel; Gary emerged from the cabin.

Cody spun the wheel, and the Áilteoir turned. The South Lighthouse gleamed ahead of them. “They’ll be watching now,” Cody said. “I don’t have a choice.”

“I know,” Gary said. “Maybe next time, eh?”

Cody sniffed. “Don’t know about this ‘next time,’ either,” he said. “The Áilteoir ain’t much but she’s all I have. I come out again like this, and Blane or whoever’s out there waiting isn’t going to be so accommodating. I lose the boat, and I lose everything. Doing this once is one thing, doing it again…” Codman gave a massive blink, his bulbous eyes seeming to vanish into his skull and them pop out again. “I’m sorry. I hope you understand.”

Caitlyn thought Gary might be angry or upset. Instead, strangely, he shrugged and sighed. “I know, Codman. I have a plane rusting on the bottom north of Rathlin that was my life, that I’d scraped and saved and borrowed to buy. And I threw it away for…” He shook his head. “I don’t even know for what, but it sure as hell wasn’t for me. So yeah, I understand.”

He said nothing else on the way back. He held Caitlyn’s hand, and he stared over the stern of the boat toward the lights of Ireland.

MAY, 1997

Each word was a separate, labored breath of air. “Tell… them… to… come… in.”

The doctor’s eyestalks blinked, and he scuttled away crab-like, his brilliant orange and blue carapace leaving her vision. Caitlyn heard him talking softly with the two of them, and a few moments later, she heard Gary and Moira enter the bedroom. Their faces swam above her as they stood over the bed. Gary was trying to smile; Moira was openly crying.

Dying was suffocation by inches. Dying was slowly being turned to painted stone. Dying was forcing the muscles of lungs and heart to pump and knowing that it was a battle she had already lost, that she could continue fighting for only a few more minutes.

At least she would be a beautiful, smiling corpse.

“I… love… you,” she told them. “I’m… sorry.”

“You can just be quiet,” Gary told her. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.” His hand stroked her face; she felt nothing of the caress-not the touch, not the heat. “We love you, too. I wish-” He stopped.

She would have nodded, would have smiled. She could only cry. “Moira?” she said.

“What do you want, Máthair?” She sniffed and scrubbed at her eyes with her sleeve. It hurt most to see her, to see how her face had lost its baby fat over the last few years. To see her shape changing to that of a young woman. To see the glimmer of the adult that she might become-and to know that because of the virus, she would never be that person.

Caitlyn had thought that the worst thing would be there to witness what the wild card virus would do to her daughter. Now she knew it was worse to leave and not know. “You… be… careful,” she told Moira. “Every… one… will… watch… out… for… you.”

“I know, Máthair.” Then the tears came, and Moira hugged her desperately as Caitlyn strained uselessly to hug her in return, to move the arms frozen at her sides.

“Go… on… now,” she told her. “Please.”

Gary slowly, gently, pulled Moira away from Caitlyn. They started to walk away, but Caitlyn called out to him. “ Gary…”

“Go on, Moira,” she heard him tell her. “I’ll be right out.” Then his face returned, hovering over her. “Hey,” he said. “Are you in pain, love? Maybe Doc Crab can-”

“No,” she told him. “No… pain.” She forced another breath through her lungs. She would have closed her eyes, but those muscles were no longer working, either. “You… kept… your… promises.”

“It was easy. You made it easy.”

“One… more.”

“What?” She saw his face, his eyes narrowing. “Ah,” he said, and the exhalation said more than words.

“No… you… don’t… understand… Promise… that… if… you… get… the… chance… to… go… home… you’ll… still… go. Don’t… worry… about… Moira. They… will… take… care… of… her… here.”

“Caitlyn-”

“ No!” The shout, though hardly more than a hoarse whisper, cost her. She had to struggle for the next breath and was afraid it wouldn’t come. He waited, his hand stroking her hair. “Promise… it. That’s… all… I… can… give… you… now. It’s… what… you… want.”

“I know,” he said. “But it’s not going to happen.”

“… promise…”

Gary sighed. “All right. I promise. I’ll go home.”

JANUARY, 1998

“… it’s not simple, I know, but you can get it. First you have to isolate ‘x’ on one side of the equation, so…”

A knock on the door interrupted the algebra lesson. Moira shrugged at Gary and went to answer it. “Good evening to you, Moira,” Constable MacEnnis said. The garda stood outside the door in a misting drizzle, beads of water running down his cap, the impossibly round, white eyes bright in the murky day. “This just came for Gary. I think he’ll want to read it.” He handed Moira an envelope. The ivory paper felt thick and heavy in his hand, spotted a bit with the rain. “It’s from Mayor Carrick,” MacEnnis added.

She could feel Gary behind her at the door. She handed him the envelope and stepped back. “Come on in,” she said to MacEnnis. “No sense in standing out in the rain.”

MacEnnis touched the crown of the cap with knobbed, scarred fingers. “I don’t think so, Moira. I should get back…” He nodded to them and walked back to the Fiat parked at the side of the road. Moira shut the door, turning to find Gary still staring at the envelope in his hands. She knew then.

“Go on,” she told him. “Open it.”

He seemed to start, as if she’d shaken him from some reverie, then slipped his forefinger under the flap and slid it along the seal. He pulled out the paper-cream-colored legal bond-and unfolded it. She could see him reading the words, saw the tremble start in his hands and the eyes widen. Without a word, he handed it to her.

… granted a presidential pardon, effective immediately. Any and all charges pending against you have been dropped by the governments of the United States, the Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom…