James Morrow - This Is the Way the World Ends

The cousins blew on the scaffold. The black oozy face transmogrified. Now Randstable was being executed for war crimes. Now Sparrow. Overwhite. Brat.

‘They’re just trying to scare us,’ said the general.

‘They’re succeeding,’ said Randstable.

‘All they want is an explanation,’ said Overwhite.

George pressed his lips to the painting, kissed Holly’s stepsister. He looked at the doll, saw what he knew was coming, a relentless transformation of the Brat-face into a George-face. He had always wished his nose was smaller. There will be a birth, he vowed. For unto us an Aubrey Paxton will be born. Nostradamus was on to something. I am innocent. Aubrey will be admitted to the good, resilient earth.

Morning finished reading the last chapter of Merribell Braddock’s Scarlet Passions , closed the book, and, without particularly meaning to, sighed.

Before her career was cut short by the end of the world, Merribell Braddock had single-handedly contributed over three hundred titles to the genre of romantic fiction. Scarlet Passions was as false as Olaf Sverre’s left eye, and yet, because it described the love of a woman for a man, Morning was touched. Poor extinct Merribell had reached right into Morning’s throat and raised a lump. The guileful author was making her see that her feelings for George – for his rough body and deceptively simple personality – definitely qualified as romantic.

‘You’re one of them, aren’t you?’ he said to her as he entered the office.

‘Them?’

‘The unadmitted. I love a shadow.’

‘I’m human,’ she said. ‘I’m human, and you love your dead wife, and I’m not her.’

George released a sharp, explosive moan. Why bring up Justine? Wasn’t it their duty to focus on the future? ‘You’re asking me to believe there were no unadmitted therapists in Antarctica? They had to go outside their race?’

‘The McMurdo framers failed to anticipate the survivor’s guilt problem. When they went to Chicago to kidnap Randstable, I offered my services. I was given an audience with Sverre. He hired me. No pay – but I would get to live out my life, such as it is.’

She removed the sacrificial knife from the wall and rested the blade against her wrist.

‘My blood is as red as yours, George. It’s as red as the blood of the innocents whose hearts were excised by this knife.’

He thought of her coming pain, winced. ‘Don’t. I’ve seen enough blood lately.’ She was human.

Human… and something of a whore.

‘How can you work for these… discontinuities?’

‘I owe them my survival. So do you.’

‘I hate them.’

‘They come to see me. They are, as you might imagine, troubled. An intolerable case load. I try my best. I listen to them, but I can’t give them what they want.’

‘They want—?’

‘Memories. Real memories, with a bite. They tell me of their lovers, friends, careers, obsessions, but it all happened to somebody else. Seaman Sparks wants me to teach him what music was like, good music – jazz, baroque, not the treacle they pump through the intercom. He would have played the flute. Then there’s Lieutenant Grass. He’s trying to recall his brother – fishing trips, touch football. It’s rare for relatives actually to find each other. Not enough time, too big a continent, and if they do connect the ages are usually wrong. Old women run across their pre-adolescent husbands. Newlyweds stumble into their middle-aged children.’

‘Are they always sad?’ George asked.

‘They have their flashes – moments you and I would call satisfaction, even joy. But most of the time, life is something they read about in a book. Yesterday Seaman Raskin said to me, “Imagine sittings in a gray, still, empty room, taking an endless true-or-false test, getting each question right, and realizing you’ll never experience anything else.”’ She nicked her desk with the sacrificial knife. ‘Don’t ever confuse unadmittance with living, George.’

‘I still hate them. Anybody would have signed that sales contract.’

‘Let me guess. You’re feeling… betrayed? Framed? Manipulated?’

‘All those things.’

‘Manipulated by your therapist? By the darkbloods?’

‘Both. You never cared about me.’

‘Don’t say what you know isn’t true.’

‘You just wanted to patch me together so I’d be fit to stand trial.’

With the sacrificial knife she began flipping back pages of Scarlet Passions . ‘Give me your Leonardo.’

‘What makes you think I have it?’

‘Give it to me.’

He pulled the painting from his shirt. She received it respectfully, holding it by the edges.

‘I don’t know what to make of this.’ Morning touched her unconceived daughter’s hair. ‘But I like what it shows. I like everything about it. Your hand is almost on my breast.’

She’s starting to get it right, he thought. Love. Marriage. Sex. Children. Species regeneration. ‘I must find a city with marble walls. They cure infertility there.’

‘It could be a hoax, of course,’ she said. ‘Nadine Covington’s bid for revenge.’

‘I believe the painting. So do you.’ Love. Marriage. Sex. But not necessarily in that order. ‘Tonight we’ll have a drink together in the Silver Dollar Casino.’

‘No.’

‘If we’re going to marry and raise a family, we should get to know each other.’

‘I cannot have a drink with you.’ She returned the Leonardo. ‘The darkbloods are here, George. They have gained the continent. Do you truly understand your situation? If the judges find against you, nothing we want – a wedding, Aubrey, her siblings – none of it will happen.’ Leaning toward him, she spoke in a frantic whisper. ‘From now on, we must never be seen together. We can’t let anyone claim that I lack objectivity. “Dr Valcourt? Oh, she’s his ex-therapist, nothing more.” I’m coming to your trial, friend. Morning Valcourt, witness for the defense. I know something that will help your case.’

‘I won’t just walk away from you. I won’t.’

Her conspiratorial voice dropped even lower. ‘You will. Until the hour of my testimony, I’ll be gone from your life. Do you understand? Gone. Searching for me will prove futile. No one can master the back passageways here, the dead ends.’

‘What do you know that will help my case?’

‘I know that I care deeply about you.’

They parted not by kissing, not by hugging, but by discreetly brushing their fingertips together. For George it was one of the most fleshly and impassioned experiences of his life. The sensation lingered in his hands. The pleasure stayed in his memory, waiting to be called up whenever he wanted to feel it.

Captain Sverre was right. A year is nothing. So far, at age thirty-five, George had known twelve thousand days full of physical sensations, many of them astonishingly wonderful – drinking coffee, reading to his daughter, touching fingertips with Morning Valcourt. But a year is nothing. No wonder the unadmitted wanted to hang him.

The Erebus Poker Club did not accomplish much poker that weekend. Brat kept forgetting what beat a straight. Whenever it was Wengernook’s deal, he couldn’t remember which cards should go up and which down. Overwhite got the chips confused, insisting that he was betting five dollars when he was really betting one.

‘These damn zombies,’ said Brat. ‘They just don’t seem real to me, know what I mean? I wouldn’t be surprised to hear this whole business was being cooked up in Moscow.’ Not a single aspect of the general – posture, visage, tone of voice – suggested that he believed himself. The unadmitted were here. They had gained the continent. They were as real as South African granite.