David Nickle - Eutopia

“I remember.”

“The fellow may not, of course, have died from my bullet,” she said. “He disappeared from the window, and when I checked later on, there was no body. Oh stop looking at me like that.” Germaine motioned with the gun. “Get up,” she said. “Get into bed. You’re hurt.”

Jason did. He hobbled over to the bed, as Germaine motioned with the gun. “Now, take off your shirt.” When Jason hesitated, she added: “I need to examine you! Please, Jason—I am a nurse!”

Jason did nothing to comply. He had thought about what she said. “You were culling them, you said… . You were culling them to find the folks that might survive this sickness, figuring there would be just one or two. That right?”

Germaine’s eyes widened, filling the glasses, and her lips parted. “You are bright, as is to be expected.”

“As I think of it, I do recollect that bullet hole, said Jason. “I also recall you telling about Charles Davenport and what an impression he made on you. You said something about him wantin’ to get rid of the bottom ten percent of people. What’s he think of you tryin’ to get rid of the bottom ninety-five? ’Cause that’s what you were doing, wasn’t it?”

“Dr. Davenport is the bright face on our movement. There has never been a need for him to know the whole of what we are doing. And in any case—we do not aim to get rid of, as you say, the bottom ninety-five percent of humanity. If I’d wanted to do that, I would have unscrewed the jar in the middle of New York City.”

“Then—”

“For us it was simply a matter of finding that top five percent. Finding—” Germaine smiled, looking Jason right in the eye “—the hero. And look… here he is.”

“Here,” said Jason, “in Eliada.”

He felt dizzy at the revelation: how Germaine Frost had with evil foresight come to Cracked Wheel, unleashed a plague and taken the one boy left standing as her own. Taken him… here. To Eliada, this place where the creature they called a Juke lived. “Tell me something,” said Jason. “About Dr. Bergstrom—is he one of your eugenicists? Like M’sieur Dulac?”

Germaine nodded and said, “For that I will apologize. Dr. Bergstrom had been engaged in promising research here, I’ll warrant that. When he contacted me last, it seemed as though he had found something beyond a hero. Something like a god: a creature that seemed resilient to dismemberment and illness—a hermaphrodite, inter-fertile with humanity. I was supposed…” She looked down. “I was supposed to find a girl.”

Jason looked up, aghast. “So you could breed her with the Juke?”

“When it was you, you who survived, I should have taken you straight back to New York.” She sighed. “Dr. Bergstrom has fallen into madness. Sheer madness.”

She lowered the pistol and leaned back against the wall, eyes still downcast. Jason briefly thought he might be able to overpower her; launch himself across the room, knock the gun from her hand as she had knocked it from his. Either shoot her or, more likely—for Jason was not so good at shooting folks as that—just get out.

But the moment passed. Her eyes looked up at him, over the tops of the glasses. They were small, curiously pig-like without the magnifying effect of her spectacles.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’ll find a strong sow for you, my prize hero. Before the day is out, we will have you bred.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Ruth Harper,” she said. “I am not so old, Nephew —” she said the word like an epitaph “—not so old, that I can’t smell the rutting urge.”

Jason barely listened.

Ruth! He hadn’t forgotten about her, but in the cascade of revelation, her predicament had fallen far from the top of his mind. And her predicament might have been dire indeed—for hadn’t he lost track of her, going into the quarantine, where Mister Juke—

“Where is she?” he demanded. “You know where she is—”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “Ruth is tucked away safe. We found her after we located Louise Butler, by the light of her lamp, reading my letters while the two of you played at footpad. The two of them are very… safe.”

“Safe?”

“Well—relatively so. They are safe as pickles in jars. We’ll see how safe soon, hmm?”

Jason lowered his feet to the floor. He was thinking not of the letters now, but of that jar that was hidden at the bottom of Germaine’s bag—the earthenware jar sealed in wax, that now Jason was certain contained another piece of bat guano from Africa… another piece of the cave germ, that killed nearly all it touched.

“Think of it, my Nephew,” said Germaine. “By day’s end, we’ll know for certain. Either Ruth, or Louise. One of the two will be a fit sow for a hero such as yourself.” She giggled. “Bergstrom can play with his monsters if he so wishes—but we…”

Jason thought for a bit, then stood up. Germaine glared at him, and waved the handgun. “Nephew!” she scolded. “Sit down! Take off your shirt! And your trousers!”

Jason shook his head. He took a step toward Germaine. He fought to keep his voice steady. “I ain’t playing your game no more, Mrs. Frost,” he said.

Germaine held the gun high, so the barrel pointed between Jason’s eyes. Jason took another step forward.

“You ain’t going to shoot me,” he said. “You killed too many folk to find me.”

“I warn you—”

Jason shook his head, said: “You won’t,” and reached out slowly to take hold of the gun’s barrel.

Germaine’s thick finger caressed the trigger, and watching her, for a moment he thought that this strange woman—this monstrous witch —might do it. But Jason kept moving, and the hammer did not fall, even though Jason took his time pulling the gun from her hand.

When he had it, her arm fell limp to her side. It was as though all the fight went out of her.

Jason opened the chamber of the revolver and shook the bullets, of which there were four, out into his hand. He looked at Germaine, who was now sobbing quietly.

“Oh, Nephew,” she said, her voice weak and tremulous. She shuffled toward him, and he shuffled back. “It’s true—I could never harm you, my darling—”

He didn’t let her finish the word hero , before bringing the butt of the gun up against the side of her head.

Its impact sent her stumbling against the wall. He hit her twice more, to make sure of it. She finally fell to the floor, and to his shame, he kicked her, hard in the middle. She was not moving—but she was not dead either. Jason watched her as he reloaded the pistol. When he was done, he raised it up and pointed at her. He stood that way for maybe a dozen heartbeats, then finally sighed; let it drop to his waist and let himself out of the room. Maybe he should become a killer; but he wasn’t one yet, and that was all there was to it.

And he had a more immediate worry.

Ruth was in here somewhere—Louise too—locked up, in a place where the Cave Germ would work only on them, and no one else. A place where the air would not move—where the smell of things could choke you because of that.

Pickles in a jar.

Jason had a good idea where such a place would be.

The song rose over the Kootenai where it wended close to the hospital. A small dock extended into the river; on the bank above it, a wooden canoe turned over. The men in their sheets stepped gingerly around it as they moved to the bank of the river. There were several dozen of them. Some had known each other, once. They all listened as the song rose up.

Lothar Feeger watched them from the water. He had swum ahead of his brethren; he alone, promising to scout out things and give a signal if there was likely to be trouble the Feegers ought know about. When Feegers had met strangers in the past—well, there had been good meetings and there had been bad ones.