“Not formally,” I said.
He had tucked his pistol in his waistband. He took it out, and I backed away. He put on a simple, concerned face. “No worries,” he said reassuringly, and handed it to me like a gift. “I’ve thought it over and you’d better take this,” he said. “Janie will be here any minute and she doesn’t like guns.”
I took the pistol. Relieved, he raised his arms and did a slow, ecstatic jig. “It’s been so goddamned long, I miss her so much. I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll wait for her.”
“I think you should come with me,” I said. “Think hard, Ben.” I tried to be gentle. Ben had been a pillar in this muck and confusion, and now they had reduced him to a hopeful child. “Is Janie really coming?”
He didn’t seem to hear me. He did another turn and smiled.
“Ben?”
“Go away. I’ll be fine.”
“Right,” I said. For the moment at least, Golokhov would make him happier than I ever could. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”
“Yeah, thanks, bud. When she gets here, we’ll need it, we certainly will. I’ll introduce you later.” He clapped his big hand on my arm. “And make sure to say good-bye to Prince Hal. Janie would have liked him, too.”
“Will do,” I said, and walked off with all due speed.
Even my tears stung and stank of creosote.
I did not trust myself with Ben’s gun or any other. I threw his pistol over the rail into the ocean, along with my own. Getting rid of them made me feel a lot less apprehensive. At least I would not be compelled to put on a wide grin, happy as a clam at high tide, and blow my own brains out.
I started climbing the emergency stairs. The safety doors had been hammered open on seven decks. The helicopter teams had made it that far before succumbing. On what I guessed was the ninth or tenth floor, I found a brass plaque propped against a bulkhead, waiting to be bolted at eye level. I bent over to examine the plaque. It showed the plan of the tenth floor of Aristos Tower. I traced my finger along the etched lines: Olympic-sized pool, left, a small pressroom for circus interviews, right, a gymnasium and physical-therapy clinic. Most of the spaces on the plaque had been enameled in shiny black: no public access.
I mused that the Lemuria was probably the closest thing I would ever experience to Montoya’s starship, hauling rich immortals across the universe. Clean (at least when finished and mopped up) and well lighted, smelling of plastics and paint and filtered air, spanking white sheets rolling across acres of California king-size beds, beautiful women sprawling before ageless studs, forever young, willing and fertile, and outside, terrific views of the Horsehead Nebula and Orion’s Belt. Each planet a challenge, every day an adventure.
“Is that what I’m after?” I asked myself. “Forgiveness and a few bits of charity from the Master?”
Gloom descended, and I had no way of knowing whether it was genuine or a bacterially induced fake. “Travel to the stars. Fill the universe with human flesh. White human flesh. White-boy dreams, Imperial destiny. All clean and healthy and Spin and Marty and . . . shit.”
I heard voices. I wasn’t alone. I looked around the corner, tripped over a gap in the tile, and stumbled into the open.
In the corridor beyond, three stewards and a Coast Guard enlisted man were going through the pockets of a body. They rolled it over, swearing monotonously under their breaths. Beyond them, five big guys in business suits caromed down the hall like drunks, but their eyes were steady and predatory. The enlisted man and one steward saw them coming, spun about to abandon their catch, and noticed me. They hunched and didn’t even signal each other, but as a team brandished a pistol and a fancy hunting rifle covered with scrollwork. The enlisted man got off a round before I could do anything more than flinch. The shot creased my cheek. I shouted and turned, somehow ended up on my hands and knees, and picked myself off the deck. Another slug went through my pant leg. I ran, skidding on tile as I rounded the corner.
Adrenaline cleared my head like a blast of stinging cold water. Screw the Long Haul. I wanted to live another few seconds, please God, please Mother. I hid in a fire-station alcove, shivering, until I heard someone coming, then burst from my cover like a stupid pheasant. The steward, less than ten yards away, had aimed his rifle in anticipation, but before he could fire again, I was through a passageway feed, into the opposite spaces.
Somehow, I had ended up back by the unmounted brass plaque. I touched my cheek, brought my fingers away bloody, and looked into the corridor where I had seen the hunters and their kill. The body remained, its face a red mass. It had been joined by two others. I picked up the plaque to use as a weapon, or a shield, and studied the engraved map. Left. I was sure of it; the hospital was on this floor and inboard, to my left.
The first heavy door to the private spaces was intact and locked. I shivered at the sound of voices, a rifle butt rhythmically tapping the walls. A painful crack and ricochet.
I took Tammy’s papers from my pocket, read them quickly, punched in an entry code, and waited for the little LED to flash red, red, no luck. I was sure that would happen, and I would be dead soon.
It flashed red. I tried another number. The voices were in the passageway.
“Did you see that bastard go down? Christ, got him right through the spine.”
“Better than paintballs.”
“Yeah, more splash.”
Laughter. Two guys out in the woods, hunting for me and whatever else they could flush from cover.
Red, red.
I lifted the paper to my eyes, studied the blurry copy of Tammy’s diagram. This was a rear door, I guessed, used by staff in the medical center. I found the door on her crude map and tried to make out the combination. She had been writing with her left hand. The scrawl of fourteen numbers was hard to understand, but I took a guess and punched it in, the buttons clicking into place above each integer. The buttons popped out on the tenth number. Confused, I angrily slapped the frame, then punched in four more.
“Whoops! Gotcha,” someone called with ringing cheer.
The light flashed green.
I fumbled the handle. Grabbed it again. Something snicked and clacked behind me: well-oiled gunmetal. The door was heavy and opened slowly.
I pushed through the gap. Saw at the end of the short hall a white steward’s jacket and a pasty damp face with a five o’clock shadow, glint of ornately decorated rifle swinging down.
Click.
“Ah, fuck. Wait up, stupid!”
A hand clutching a pistol poked around the corner and fired. The slug caught me in my side, glanced off the bulletproof vest over my ribs, blasted paint and metal from the bulkhead, and shoved me like a bully’s big hard fist through the door.
I tugged the door shut and pushed the lock home, then jerked at the pound of a rifle butt. In one frantic turn, as I stood away from the door, I saw what could have been a gray-carpeted hallway in any well-funded modern hospital or university building: closed office doors, cork bulletin boards (still virginal and bare) mounted on freshly painted beige walls, and at the end, a sitting or waiting room with two utilitarian blue couches, two red chairs, a table, and a wall-spanning mural.
I caught my breath. Touched the vest through the hole in my jacket, felt the compressed groove beneath the fabric, poked my finger through the exit hole.
One one thousand, two one thousand, three . . .
Inspected the pattern of gray-and-black marks on the back of my sleeve, from the bullet’s near impact and the spray of paint chips.
