Elizabeth Hand - 12 Monkeys

“I love seeing the sun.” He blinked, relishing the wan warmth that touched his cheeks despite the afternoon’s chill. Then with a sigh he leaned forward. He tugged his pants from the car door, struggling to get into them, and almost fell.

“Wait — let me help you.”

Kathryn put an arm around him, pulling him to her as she tugged the pants over his legs. Cole leaned closer to her, closing his eyes.

“You smell so good,” he murmured.

She paused and looked into his face. His eyes opened and she found herself staring into them, seeing the reflection of branches, sky, a tiny sun, her own face. Her mouth went dry and she felt herself flush as he reached his hand out and touched her cheek, stroking a tendril of dark hair.

“You — you have to give yourself up, you know,” she said, her voice breaking.

Cole blinked. His eyes grew hard, all the reflected wonder fading from them as he grit his teeth.

“James, please,” she went on pleadingly. “If you would just—”

She broke off, shocked, as his hand closed around her wrist so tightly that she gasped.

“I’m really sorry,” he said. His voice was utterly devoid of warmth as he turned and pushed her back into the car. “But I have to do this. I have a mission.”

Moments later the Jag coughed back to life once more and edged out of the clearing, back onto the road.

It was night when they found Outerbridge Road. They drove past diary farms and fallow cornfields, a few farmhouses with lights burning yellow in the early winter evening. Finally they reached a high stone wall whose gates read NUMBER 27. Well back from the road, a brightly lit Craftsman-style mansion sat amidst rolling lawns and bare maple trees. The driveway and the road were lined with luxury cars. Cole could see several uniformed security guards strolling down the drive, holding walkie-talkies and waving to guests.

“Keep going,” he said tightly, and the Jag moved on.

They drove another half mile or so. Then, “Here,” Cole commanded. “Go left.”

Kathryn shook her head. “Left? There’s nothing but—”

“Turn.”

At the side of the road was a small clearing that extended a good ways into the wood. A faint glimmer of moonlight touched the slender shadows of aspen and sumac. With a groan, the Jag rolled off the blacktop and onto pitted ground, crawled along until Cole said, “Stop. Right here.”

Kathryn turned off the ignition. “You know, you really can’t—”

But he was already outside, limping as he raced to the driver’s door. He yanked it open and pulled Kathryn out, palming the Jag’s keys.

“What are you doing? !”

Silently he dragged her to the back of the Jag and pulled the trunk open.

“No — James, no! ”

Still silent, he grabbed her and pushed her in, slamming the trunk closed. Her muffled cries followed him as he began limping out of the clearing.

“James!”

He halted, panting, and looked back; then, his fists clenching and unclenching, he slowly and purposefully returned to the car.

A short while later he made his way back down the road. After he’d gone about a hundred yards, he swung over the wall and cut through the woods, moving stealthily through the shadows until he saw below him the mansion’s circular drive. More cars were parked here, and two well-built men in black business suits patrolled them vigilantly, pausing every now and then to have a cigarette. Cole waited until they were on the far end of the let, then ran in an awkward half-crouch from the cover of the bare trees, grimacing as his injured leg banged against a stone. A minute later he was rolling beneath a red Mercedes, his heart hammering inside him and his breath coming in hard gasps.

“They find him?”

Cole sprawled beneath the car. Gravel dug into his chest and arms, lodged painfully around Kathryn Railly’s bandage. A few feet away, close enough that he could have grabbed him if he wanted to, one of the men paused. Cole watched as the man’s shiny black shoes kicked idly at the gravel, then ground out a smoldering cigarette.

“Find who?” A second pair of feet joined the first.

“That kid. The one in the pipe.”

Harsh laughter from the second man. “You believe this? They’re dropping a monkey down there with a miniature infrared camera strapped on him and a roast beef sandwich wrapped in tin foil.”

The other man guffawed. “You’re making that up!”

“I shit you not.” Cole let his breath out as the voices began to recede and the two pairs of feet faded into the shadows at the other end of the drive. “Man, life is weird! A monkey and a sandwich.”

Without a sound, Cole rolled out form under the Mercedes and under the car in front of it. His eyes remained fixed on the small bright oblong that was the side entrance to the mansion. He never saw his pistol, lying in the gravel beneath the red Mercedes behind him.

Inside his father’s house, Jeffrey Goines sat grinning in the formal dining room, listening to his father speak. Around him were forty-odd other guests, elegantly attired in black tie and evening gowns, the sea of black broken here and there by a sequined dress, the crimson slash of a cummerbund. Jeffrey took another sip of champagne and gazed longingly at the untouched desert in front of the woman beside him. Some captain of industry’s anorexic trophy wife, an aspiring model who might weigh one hundred pounds, if you counted the rack of diamonds around her neck. He toyed with the idea of just taking her plate — it was sinful, really, to waste chocolate profiteroles like that, not to mention Raoul’s sublime raspberry trifle.

A wave of laughter brought his attention back to the head of the table where Leland Goines stood. He was truly an imposing figure in his tux, over six feet tall and broad-shouldered, with silvery hair and ice-blue eyes. Leland waited until the laughter subsided, then went on in his rich, deep voice.

“Would that I could enjoy this opulent dinner and this excellent and stimulating company for itself, with no sense of purpose,” he said, gesturing grandly around the table. “But, alas, I am burdened with the sense that with all this excess of public attention and this cacophony of praise, there comes great responsibility. Indeed, I practically feel a soapbox growing under my feet whenever I stand for more than a few seconds.”

More knowing laughter from the guests. Jeffrey bared his teeth in a false smile.

“Oh, ha,” he said, and deftly speared a profiterole from his neighbor’s plate.

“The dangers of science are a time-worn threat,” Dr. Goines continued, “from Prometheus stealing fire from the gods to the Cold War era of the Dr. Strangelove terror.”

From a doorway at the far end of the room entered a scowling man in a black suit. His gaze darted across the long table, taking in the rows of rapt faces. After a minute he sighted the object of his search.

“Mr. Goines,” a low voice came from behind Jeffrey.

Jeffrey hastily swallowed his chocolate, dabbing his mouth with a napkin as he craned his neck to see who was calling him.

“Yeah?”

The black-clad man bent to whisper in Jeffrey’s ear. At the head of the table, Leland Goines gathered steam, his voice rising and falling in evangelical fervor.

“But never before — not even at Los Alamos, when the scientists made bets on whether their first atomic bomb test would wipe out New Mexico — never before has science given us so much reason to fear the power we have at hand.”