A. Warren Merkey Read online

  I knew I was going to jerk the trigger, so I shot early, hoping to compensate. I missed and fired another shot as the gun dropped from the upward recoil. Three rounds left. The gunner smiled at me, unhurt. He prepared to take another shot at me, raising his rifle and pressing his cheek to the stock. I finally got a good view of the front sight of my pistol, just as the pilot turned to look at me. I saw him because the helicopter drifted him into my sights and because the sun reflected off his glasses from inside his canopy. I let the front sight settle until it rested just below that point of glare. The gun went off unexpectedly, as it should when you have all the time in the world to hit a paper target that isn’t shooting back at you. The helicopter started to do strange things. The gunner struggled to reset his sights on me. I emptied my pistol at him. The helicopter shot eastward at a steep rotor angle.

  I turned back to Karl and discovered my right leg didn’t work. I dropped into the glass litter on the black-and-white floor tile and scooted toward Karl. My wounded leg was a nerveless nuisance. My shoulder was burning. My empty pistol was a blood-covered hindrance. I put the forty-five down, its slide locked back by the emptied clip. Somewhere in the distance a helicopter still flew.

  A distant explosion and gunshots sounded muffled to my ears after so much noise. I wanted to do something for Karl but lacked the hands and brains needed for the task. I put my hand on his shoulder. His chest heaved then settled down to stillness. I denied any meaning for that disturbing process. My face and hands were too cold to feel his breath. My eyes were too blurry to see the fine detail of any other life signs in Karl. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t Karl. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t Kansas. But it was my fault.

  I remembered one of Karl’s oft-repeated lessons on weapons - never carry an empty pistol. I picked up my pistol again and ejected the clip. It was all I could do, all I could think. A one-handed search of my pockets found no spare clip, but the single round I mistakingly ejected before beginning my fateful escape from the Hole. I pushed the round into the clip, started the clip into the butt with one bloody, shaking hand. I paused when I detected motion outside the store. A man in a military parka rounded the corner of the shattered storefront, jerked to a halt, and waved an assault weapon at me. I took my hand away from the pistol. He came into the store and stood over me, studying the pistol and its loose clip. He gripped the compact automatic rifle casually in his left hand, confident I was no threat to him. The parka hood hid much of his face. He did nothing for a moment except place a finger against the hood at his right ear. Karl was not breathing. I was not breathing.

  The sound of the helicopter that was increasing now decreased. The man pulled back the parka hood, scowling. He was Asian. He yanked out a radio earplug from his right ear. He pulled the slide back on his weapon, ejecting nothing. He dropped the machine gun into the broken glass. He looked at my old forty-five again. I looked over at Karl’s pistol lying a few feet away, the one I had tried to fetch for Karl to use. The man’s eyes followed mine to the weapon. As he took his first step toward Karl’s nine-millimeter, I grabbed my pistol, pounded the clip home, and snapped the slide shut on the single round. Before I could raise it high enough to aim it at the foreign operative, he kicked the pistol from my hand, sending it far across the floor. He turned back to Karl’s pistol. Karl had two pistols. I felt behind me, found Karl’s arm and tugged his sleeve to pull his hand from under his body. I could feel the other pistol in Karl’s lifeless hand. I grabbed it. The Asian man had taken an extra second to check Karl’s pistol. He was surprised when he turned back toward me.

  Section 001 Invisible

  The boy awoke and the eye that could open did. “I’m still alive.” He coughed.

  “Are you sure?”

  He turned his head to the side. He squinted and frowned. Are you sure? The hard lump next to his ear had replied to his tentative declaration of being. He was almost hoping, when he lay down under the stars and waited for the pain to let him sleep, that he would not wake up. Words of grim humor came to him. He was too young to know the term gallows humor. “If I was dead I wouldn’t feel this bad,” he rasped.

  “Are the dead so comfortable?” It was a too-quick reply, with an intonation that implied intentional wit, mixed with concern.

  Are the dead so comfortable? Why would she say such a thing? Was he awake or dreaming? Was he alive or dead? He dreamed of Milly being a real person. He dreamed of many things and wished many things and got nothing but pain and fear when his eyes were open. He didn’t want to get up and be awake. A lion roared in the near distance. He could smell lions. Samson sat up quickly, his blanket falling away in a shower of dust. He groped for his spear. He listened for a moment, shivering in the cold. The direction of the breeze favored him for the moment. He had time to move away. He was hungry. He was always hungry. He must be awake. No, he was also hungry in his dreams. Samson rubbed at the crusty eye to break it open.

  ” You should be dead. You slept on the ground.”

  He should? Emphasis on the word? Was he hallucinating? He continued the conversation because it was strange, interesting. “I was too tired to climb.”

  “Too weak, you mean. When was the last time you ate?”

  “Why do you ask? You remember everything.” Did Milly remember everything? How could she remember what he didn’t tell her?

  “I don’t remember what you don’t tell me.”

  Yes, but… “How did you know I slept on the ground?” No answer to that. Samson shook more dust from his blanket and rolled it. He looked to the east. The bad eye saw blurry dawn orange. The good eye saw the fat disk of the rising sun and the vertical line through it. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and inspected the smear.

  “When was the last time you ate, Samson?”

  “I don’t remember.” He didn’t lie. He remembered the meal well but the days were unnumbered into the past. “Day before yesterday?” Perhaps a bad guess would satisfy her. Did he leave Milly on? Was it Milly speaking to him? Why was she so strange this morning?

  “That’s what you said yesterday. You really must eat today, Sammy. Do nothing else but eat!”

  “Did you put an exclamation point at the end of that, Milly?” He was disturbed that Milly was not Milly today. He was disturbed that he could not trust his senses that were telling him Milly was strange. How could Milly be strange? She was only his teaching machine. The lack of food must be affecting his brain now.

  “You’re dying, and all you can choose to discuss with me is the tone of my voice?”

  “You’re trying to scare me, Milly. How can you do that?” Milly did frighten him. He didn’t want to feel more frightened. Fear resided next to hunger in his gut, always competing for his attention. He got to his feet using his spear for support. He picked up his mat, rolled it, tied it with his blanket to his pack. He shouldered the pack. Milly was in the pack, behind him now. He still heard her very clearly.

  “I assume you’ll head east toward the elevator,” she said behind his shoulder. “I’ll warn you again about the danger of going there, although I doubt you’ll live that long. At least there’s a river in that direction. You can catch fish. Or be eaten by a crocodile!”

  Behind him? It didn’t sound like it now. She was next to him or in front of him. He could remove his pack, pull her out, make sure Milly was off. No. Too much effort. “You’re mean today!” Samson said it loudly, to keep the quaver from his voice.

  “Being nice hasn’t been effective, Sammy.”

  “I’m only a kid!” Why did he respond? He was too tired for this. “Every animal on the plain wants to eat me or run over me.”

  “Feeling sorry for yourself?”

  Yes. Samson shook his head, started to walk, and immediately remembered the cut on one foot. He shifted his spear to take some weight off the foot. He walked slowly, heavily favoring the injured foot as the cut began to rupture and hurt again.

  “How far are you from the elevator, Sammy?”

  “Why are
you initiating conversation? I can remember when you only talked when I asked you a question.”

  “I can remember when you didn’t know it all and you asked me questions all the time.”

  “I can remember when you answered all my questions. Why do you want to know how far I am from the elevator? You say it doesn’t work.”

  “No, it doesn’t work. I know exactly how far you are from the elevator. I’m just trying to keep your brain awake and your thoughts on survival.”

  “How do you know the exact distance, Milly? I thought I had to help you with the measurement.”

  “That was for your educational benefit.”

  Samson shook his head again - gently because it easily made him dizzy. The “problem” of Milly added to his burden. She distracted him when what little concentration remained to him was needed for avoiding the relentless dangers of hiking in lion country. He labored under his pack, careful of his path through the brush and across the plain. The sun rose well above the horizon and slipped away from the vertical line of the elevator. Samson’s bad eye registered the blue of sky and the straw-gold of plain. His good eye saw puffs of dust among the gazelles practicing escape from death.

  “Is your brain working, Sammy?”

  Samson stopped, with whatever he was thinking or dreaming evaporating, leaving him unsure he had been awake, leaving him no memories of what he was doing or where he had been during his slow trek through the brushy plain. The brief chill of dawn had long since yielded to the heat of equatorial morning. He sat down in a small amount of shade under a thorny tree. He didn’t have much energy for it, but the mystery of Milly continued to bother him. His brain was still working. It always worked too much, if not too well. “I don’t know,” he answered.

  “I have a penny, if you have a thought.”

  Samson closed his good eye. Where would he spend a penny? “The thought is why.” He was unable to find enough breath to speak continuously. ” You’re this little computer… I carry around in my bag. You used to tell me… stories and give me lessons… in math and science. Feed you some sunlight every day… and you helped me stay alive. I suppose it doesn’t matter… how you know so much. But now I wonder why .”

  “I’m your teacher, Sammy. That’s all. That’s why.”

  “I think you… know something… you won’t teach me.”

  “How could I not?”

  He shook his head yet again, waited for the dizziness to pass, and struggled back to his feet. He limped away from the tree. A tear rolled down from his good eye. It left a dirty track as it lost its precious moisture. His bad eye was closed and he felt no urge to reopen it. Flies buzzed around him and walked on him, and he suffered their tickling torment with little effort to discourage them. His steps came ever more slowly. He could hardly put weight on his cut foot. He planted the spear and stepped, planted and stepped.

  When Samson reached a clear area near the river he stopped. His goal was close: the African Space Elevator. He could see it across the river: big buildings, the tallest reaching far into the sky, its needle disappearing into space. He knew he would never make it there. He knew it was never his means of escape. It was enough that he came this far. He was so tired he couldn’t feel fear, couldn’t remember hunger. Who was Milly? “Oops, I almost… stepped in some.”

  “Stepped in what?” Milly asked.

  “Zebra dung.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “If you’re smart enough…” - Samson took a breath - “to use… exclamatory statements… and try to scare me, then… you should… be able to… respond correctly to… ‘zebra dung.’”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You should have asked… how I knew… it was zebra dung.”

  “I assumed you saw it coming out of the animal. You’re a dung scientist? How do you know?”

  “I would have… said, ‘Because… it’s striped.’”

  “I’m supposed to laugh?” Milly responded loudly with almost no pause. “You’re staggering from starvation and an injured foot, can’t see out of one infected eye, and will probably reside in a hyena’s gut before next morning - and you want me to laugh?”

  Samson was almost alert enough to be startled by Milly’s tirade. Not only did her gruesome words disturb him but now the fear that she was a stranger made him start to cry. “I was testing… you! How do you… know about… the eye? I was… keeping that… from you!”

  “Do you think I’m alive?” she challenged. “Am I an autonomous machine intelligence?”

  “Are you?” Stifling his emotions, Samson waited for a reply, suspecting it wouldn’t be the truth, because Milly probably had never been Milly. It was interesting that Milly stopped, as if thinking about her reply. Why would a machine take so long? When Milly did speak, Samson didn’t have time to be surprised.

  ” Something is coming!” Milly exclaimed. “How long we’ve waited!”

  A shockwave struck the plain, blowing the tall grass over, shaking the ground, sending herd animals stampeding away. Samson couldn’t withstand the invisible hammer of pressure and he fell. Lying on his side, he squinted upward to find the source of the powerful disturbance. A bright, round object swelled in size and darkened through incandescent colors from white to red. The red disc ballooned to cover half the sky, then cleared, almost disappearing. Only the halo of sunlight curving around the edges of the phenomenon revealed its continuing existence above Samson. He cringed on the ground as the thing pushed on him and vibrated him. He opened his mouth to scream and it stuck open. He couldn’t exhale to cry. He convulsed briefly and stiffened into rigidity. Sunlight glinted from the metal tip of his spear as it spun and floated vertically in the darkening air of his failing sight.

  Section 002 1980 - Meeting Sam

  “Enjoying the mixer?” he asked, and before I even looked up at him I knew who he was and what he meant. He was that young astronomer who looked Chinese and he was commenting that I was not enjoying the mixer. If I wanted to talk to anybody in this stuffy room full of intellectual politics he was probably the last I would choose. I looked up at him from my rolling prison and smiled insincerely. “I thought not,” he said, obviously taking the cue from my flattened smile that he should get lost. He started to retreat then checked himself. “Would you like some help getting out of here?” He must have been watching me for awhile to assess my enjoyment of the party that precisely. I was not flattered by his attention.

  “As long as you don’t get any ideas.” Yes, I have a mean streak, but now I wondered if I should be nice to him. He spoke English like a native American. The thick glasses were a negative factor in my suddenly prejudiced frame of mind, but he looked better up close than from a distance. I then realized I had noticed him on several occasions around campus - bumping into people and things.

  “Ideas.” He tilted his head back, adjusted his glasses, looked away from me. I couldn’t read his eyes because of the glasses but something made him pause. “I could use some help with ideas. I don’t get enough good ideas, and when I do, my math isn’t strong enough to describe them.”

  “My coat is in the hall closet,” I said meaningfully.

  He turned back to me with a smile. “I’m getting an idea.” He had good teeth and I could tell he wasn’t a smoker. Why was I running him through my man-filter? What man-filter? Those days were over. He wasn’t even close to my ideal male. “Why don’t I shut up and get you out of here?” He said it in good humor and strode toward the doorway to the hall. I wondered about his comment about math. Did he know I was a mathematician? Why would he be interested in me? I was sure I was not an ideal female to him, or even a last-choice female. I needed to turn off my self-pity. Just play it straight and friendly; he might be very nice and even interesting.

  “What’s your name?” I inquired when he came back. I accepted my coat from him, not even realizing he knew which coat in the hall closet was mine.

  “Samuel Lee,” he answered. “What’s yours?”

  “
Millicent DuPont.” I held out my hand which he quickly took and squeezed. Firm handshake: good sign.

  “Hey, Sam,” a voice called from across the mixer battlefield, “you gonna play for us tonight?”

  “You gonna take up a collection? My car needs new tires.”

  “I’ll set an empty beer mug on the piano and the rich among us can donate.”

  There were no rich among us. Samuel Lee looked at me through his thick lenses and I looked back at him through mine. He was more interesting now as I watched his face react to his thoughts. Was he a musician? Finally he said: “Not this time, Jim. I’m out of practice.”

  “Aw, c’mon, man! We need a little music to drown out the Greek chorus.”

  Samuel Lee heaved a theatrical sigh, and I thought he was going to change his mind. I wanted to hear him play. I assumed he was a pianist, since that was the only instrument in sight. “Sorry, man. I gotta go. I have three classes to teach tomorrow.” Several more people spoke up, trying to get Samuel Lee to play, and now I was almost angry that he wouldn’t. I pushed my wheels hard, following him into the hall. I still hadn’t put on my coat.

  “I’d like to hear you,” I said, watching him don his coat in the foyer.

  “I’m not a musician any longer. Anyway, it’s a bad piano, even if it was in tune.”

  “You must be good if you know a good piano from a bad one.”

  “I stopped playing when I was thirteen.” He had his coat on. I didn’t. He sat down on the foyer bench and waited for me to get into my coat. He took his glasses off and squinted at the lenses. He wasn’t bad looking at all. I guessed he might be of Korean origin. I had a soft spot in my heart for Koreans. One of them saved my dad’s life. Of course, a lot of them were also trying to kill him.

  “Am I stopping you from doing something you like to do?” I asked.