Edgar Pangborn - A Mirror for Observers

“Bill? Bill jumped on him?”

“Yes. Had him on the phone, and I happened to see Walker afterward on my way out. Looked sandbagged. So — Walker, in his tailspin, and Dr. Hodding, pie-eyed drunk, conferred last night. I saw ’em at Max’s, among the pretty toy soldiers. Then Walker got into Hodding’s laboratory and took — something.” Abraham whitened under his tan; I was afraid the glass would jump from his hand. “Just guessing: a new virus?”

He managed to set his glass on the floor. “New. Can be airborne. Indefinitely viable, and no defenses in the human — no, no! — mammalian organism, that’s what Dr. Hodding was mumbling when — well, Mr. Nicholas gave him sleeping powders, after you left, but, poor devil, he wasn’t quite out, he started mumbling and tossing on the bed after Mr. Nicholas went upstairs and left me with him. Mammalian — it isn’t just us, Ben — Will — it’s everything. Medium of distribution too — some stuff like pollen — green—”

“Slow down, boy. Walker did get it, then?”

“Yes.”

“Contagious-plus, of course.”

“Respiratory system. He kept muttering about his monkeys and hamsters. Kept saying: ‘Macacus rhesus eighty-five per cent.’ I don’t know if that meant mortality. I think it did. Neurotoxin. Reaches the nervous system through the respiratory. Spinal paralysis….”

“And Walker?”

“Had it with him this afternoon. I stayed with Hodding — hours, I guess — chewing my damn nails, not knowing anything to do. Bill came home early, at three. Hodding was sound asleep then. Bill went up to Max’s. I tagged along, don’t think he wanted me to. They were out on the roof garden: Senator Galt sounding off about nothing much, Max pretending to listen. Miriam was there. That drip Peter Fry. Mr. Nicholas” — Abraham was shaking all over, reaching toward the drink but not taking it up — “Nicholas, taking it easy in a lounge chair built to hold him. God, what a beautiful afternoon! Warm…. I don’t think Galt and Fry knew Walker was there in the penthouse. I saw Miriam was worried about something, got her alone a second and asked. She started to tell me something about Walker in there building up a jag, but right then he came tearing out, ran to the parapet. Nobody could’ve stopped him, but nobody tried. He was balancing there with that — that damned peewee test tube, looked like green powder. Waved it at us. He was yelling: ‘Airborne! Airborne!’ He wasn’t incoherent. Laughing like crazy, but wasn’t incoherent. He flung it out over the Esplanade — must’ve shattered into dust, you wouldn’t even find the cork. Then he went after it. Not like jumping. Like floating out, as if he thought he could fly…. Max — Max had some kind of fit. Heart maybe. Turned white and started to fold. I think Miriam took care of him. Mr. Nicholas said: ‘Get the kid out of here!’ And Bill hustled me downstairs. I didn’t see the police. The others must have agreed to say nothing about me, I don’t know why they bothered. Police didn’t hear about Bill’s being there either, I think. He stayed with me, couple of hours, I guess, until somebody phoned down from Max’s and he went back up there. Then I — then I—”

“Then you came to me. Do they know you’re here?”

“I don’t think so. Just walked out, didn’t meet anybody.” He could finish the drink now, the glass rattling against his teeth.

“Are you through with them, Abraham?”

He cried out: “Christ, I had every chance to ask myself, ‘What’s a political party doing, paying a man to invent — to discover — I knew! I must have known, and wouldn’t look. Just some important abstract research, Bill said — yes, that’s something Bill said to me, when I was curious—”

“Quiet down, friend. Probably what Hodding thought himself, at least when it started. He used to be a good scientist. Emotional flaw somewhere, maybe just an overdeveloped ability to kid himself about anything not related to his field—”

“But why didn’t I — why didn’t I—”

“Why don’t you get some sleep?”

He raved then about how he’d only bring trouble to me too. I won’t record that. There were questions I could have asked. Nicholas, “taking it easy in a lounge chair,” must certainly have known what Walker had with him. Max perhaps didn’t know until too late. Max and Nicholas together could surely have overpowered Walker and taken the thing away. I asked none of those questions. I fetched a sleeping pill and made the boy swallow it.

So it’s out there, Drozma — probably. I cling to frail scraps of possibility. Walker stole the wrong test tube — no, because Hodding discovered the loss in a horribly sober morning and knew what it meant.

Maybe it’s not as “successful” as Hodding thought. He couldn’t be positive that the human organism has no defenses. Maybe wind will sweep it away, and factors not discoverable in the laboratory will make it not so viable. Maybe the tube fell unbroken in the river. Oh sure, Drozma, maybe there are “canals” on Mars.

Sunrise was gradual and deep this morning. I sat by one of my living-room windows and saw the grayness above the East River take on a slow flush and then a hint of gold. Spires and rooftops on the Brooklyn side were catching hold of light like cobwebs on the grass after a rain. I watched a tug slip across the river on some errand clothed in magic by the latter end of night. It drew a soft line of smoke on the water, for there was a small breeze out of the east. The line broadened to a pathway, white and gold at my end, total mystery beyond.

Abraham stirred and sighed. Without turning my head, I knew it when he crept into the room with his shoes in his hand. I said: “Don’t go.”

He set the shoes on the floor and limped toward me in stockinged feet. In that dimness I could see that his face was calm, without anger and perhaps without fear. An empty calm, spent, like despair. “Lordy, didn’t you even go to bed?”

“I never need much sleep. You don’t need to go, Abraham.”

“But I do.”

“Well, where?”

“I don’t know — haven’t thought.”

“Not back to Keller and Nicholas.”

“No…. I can’t bring on you the trouble I bring to everyone who knows me.”

“That’s nothing but vanity upside down. Something made you come here, so why go away?”

“I had to talk to someone who could listen. Selfish need. So I — did talk. But—”

“You never brought any trouble on Keller and Nicholas. They brought it on you. You could see that if you’d look at it straight.”

“I don’t know….” He knelt at the window sill, staring out with his chin on his arms. “Good, isn’t it? And doesn’t need the human to be good. Except for eyes to see it. Ears for the boat whistles — that won’t be there if — oh well, who’s to say a chipmunk couldn’t enjoy a sunrise? But then, maybe there won’t even be—” He was silent a long time. “Have you thought about it that way? Will? What if all those buildings over there were empty? Heaps of steel and stone. How long would they stand, with nobody to care about ’em? Maybe not even any rats to gnaw away at the wooden parts. Birds might use the roofs, don’t you think? Gulls — where do seagulls build?”

“Dead trees.”

“Other birds might use ’em, though. They ought to make good small mountains, cliffs. A world of birds and bugs and reptiles. Orioles, ephemerids, little snakes with nobody to tread and kill ’em. Trees everywhere, or grass. First just a funny little green finger between two paving stones, and then before too long — you know, I read somewhere that the water level is rising much faster than in the last century. Maybe that’ll take care of everything. The big waves would make short work of the best of towers, I’m sure of that. Nice old Hudson an inland sea. And the Mohawk Valley. New England would be a big island, New York State a bunch of little mountainous islands, and just nobody to bother the garter snakes.”