COSMOS magazine

Book III: Post Mortal

Thursday, July 3

In 1951, twenty-two days after Bruce Blick's ninth birthday, his classmate Edward Eichner had knocked him down and broken his glasses. Bruce sat on the sidewalk and screamed, "I hate you, Eddie! I wish you were dead!" The following day, red-eyed Mrs. Colin told the class that Ed Eichner would not be coming back to school any more. He and his twin sister Isabel had been walking home from the grocery store, running an errand for their mother. A furniture delivery van had plowed up over the sidewalk, wildly out of control, killing both children instantly.

Hearing the news from his distraught teacher, Bruce realized his power and his responsibility. It marked a turning point in his life. He never again wished anyone dead unless he really meant it.

When Bruce completed his schooling at the William Parsons Military Academy, his father gave him flying lessons as a graduation gift and bought him a Piper Cherokee. When he graduated with honours from Yale with a dual degree in physics and political science, his father gave him a summer-house in Portugal and a corner office on the executive floor of the Fitzgerald Hotel in New York. When he married Patricia Elaine Newfoundland, a former debutante and minor heiress, the wedding was among the events of the season. Two months after Bruce's 48th birthday, his father died, leaving him a financial empire that included a chain of hotels and a company that produced and sold generic pharmaceuticals.

Hundreds of millions of people would have given up their left eye to have Bruce's life, but his predominant emotions were fear and anxiety. Over the years, his concept of the power he wielded had matured from the limited understanding he possessed at nine years of age. Nevertheless he knew the power was real, and he spent most of his time pondering what was best for the world, worrying desperately that he would make a mistake.

The year Bruce turned 54, Jesus Martinez of Phoenix, Arizona took a shot at him with a .22 calibre rifle and wounded him in the shoulder. The police investigation revealed that Bruce had attempted to buy the house and land Jesus had inherited from his grandmother. When Jesus would not sell, Bruce put financial pressure on the City Council to condemn the house so that the street could be widened. In fact, the street-widening project never materialized, and the city sold the land, along with ten adjoining lots, to Bruce's company, North Star Limited. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, MorningStar Incorporated, Blick constructed a high-rise apartment building there, with shops and offices on the lower floors. The land that had been in the Martinez family for five generations was worth $3,285,995 on the day Jesus shot but failed to kill Bruce. The city had paid Jesus $12,000.

The shooting marked a second major turning point in Bruce's life. Although he was not seriously wounded, and his shoulder healed rapidly, he found himself growing excessively jumpy and seldom ventured outside his residential suite at the Fitzgerald. Unable to tolerate his paranoia, his wife Patricia left him. After six months, his psychotherapist, Dr. James Rutherford, advised him to spend some time far away from the city. Bruce considered the house in Portugal, but too many people knew he owned it, and besides it was in an area with an unacceptably dense population. He sent his personal assistant Tom Gebhardt to locate a secluded place well off the beaten track. Tom flew to Monte Capanne and crossed the water to consider Amalfi, took a company Sikorski to fifteen hamlets in Bulgaria and Bosnia, startling the locals, tested the sentiment in Bangalore and the former Congo Republic but found both severely wanting, and finally pinning down a ruined XVII century monastery near San Miguel Regla in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. Bruce approved the purchase and Tom hired architects and contractors from Mexico City to handle the restoration.

Isolated as he was, Bruce Blick had ample time to study the world and to ponder which course would be best for humankind. He realized that his power was far greater even than he had known, that in fact he could change the course of human evolution. What a pity that he could not carry out his plans single-handedly, that he must rely on idiots and madmen shaped to his purposes.

 

The moment he was satisfied that Gibson's experiments were not just another bogus bid for funding, that they appeared to be the real thing at last, he flew back by corporation jet to his empty palatial Manhattan apartment. There was a child named Alex, and the child was missing. Blick called Tom Gebhardt to him and within hours sent all his dogs baying after this infant whose tissues, perhaps, contained the elixir of eternity in its most uncorrupted form. He knew death was within his gift, had known it since his childhood. If he had to slaughter the lot of them, child and mother and scientist and vigilante alike, and strip them down to code and chemicals, he would do it easily and without qualm. He would find endless life, and make himself new, forever.

Thursday, July 3

A party was roaring at the Sigma Chi fraternity house, and cars lined the street for more than three blocks.

"Perfect." Wayne pulled up to the curb behind a sleek Italian sports car. "You wait here. I'm gonna take the plates off that sucker and put them onto our Ranger. Stay in the car." His Swiss Army knife had a fairly stout screw driver. It took only a moment to switch the plates. Luckily it wasn't a frat boy's vanity plates saying BIGUS DIKUS or something. "Nobody looks at their license plates when they get in their car." Wayne started up the Ranger. "Especially people as drunk as these kids'll be by the time their party's over."

"What if a cop stops us and looks up the plates on the computer and finds out they're on the wrong vehicle?"

"Well, could happen. But let's not look for trouble. Cross that bridge if we come to it. Shut up now, okay?"

Nearing the outskirts of town, Alex said, "Wayne, I need to pee." After the silence the kid's high-pitched voice was painfully loud.

"Shit! Why the hell didn't you do that while I was switching the plates?"

"You said to stay in the pickup."

Wayne pulled over to the curb. "Okay, get out and pee. Make it quick."

"There's no bathroom!"

"Just pee on the ground! Come on, move it!" Wayne felt as though his nerves would snap if the kid didn't hurry.

"I think I may need to poop too."

"No time. Hold it in for now and do it later. Get back in the frigging car."

"It's not a car. It's a pickup truck."

"Get the hell inside and shut up. I mean it, you little shit. Sit still and be quiet."

"I'm hungry, Wayne." Alex closed the door, but not hard enough to latch it.

"God damn it." Wayne reached across and slammed the door.

They had gone another quarter mile when Alex piped up again, "I'm hungry. When can we eat?"

"You'll just have to wait. We don't have time to stop."

"But I get sick if I don't eat. I'm already getting a headache."

"Well, then, lie down and go to sleep. You won't know you're hungry if you're asleep."

"I can't go to sleep when I'm hungry," Alex whined.

"If you don't shut up and do what you're told," Wayne roared at the top of his voice, shaking the tree-shaped air freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror, "I'll blow your head off and throw your body out on the highway."

For a minute there was blessed silence. He jabbed the radio, found a country station. The child's small voice reached him through his simmering rage and Emmy-Lou Harris's White Line Fever.

"Wayne, I'm sorry I upset you."

He grunted. "Just keep quiet and be good. Or I'll do what I'd said."

"Uh, you can't, you know."

Fury bubbled up again into his brain. He slammed on the brakes, pulled to the side of the highway and stopped. Grabbing at Alex's shoulder to shake him, he found himself looking into the boy's innocent, knowing eyes.

"Bullshit. I can do whatever I like."

The boy gazed back at him with terrifying quiet confidence. He should have been quaking in his shoes. He should have been shitting his pants with terror, like Wayne had done when his daddy threatened him with a knife.

"We're both—" Alex paused, seemed to shrink a little. "Wayne, promise you won't be angry if I say this?"

"Say what you like, small change." His anger had drained away. "Words can't hurt me."

"Look, I was thinking about this when you went to get your shot. If you kill me, they'll kill you."

"Hafta find me first. Hafta know I did it." He pulled back onto the highway.

"Mom and Paul both saw you. I mean, it's obvious."

"You want me to let you out at the next police station, is that it?" Wayne barked a laugh. "Well, no. You're my ticket to a check up and my final shot. If I let you go before Gibson's doc pal checks me out, my damned brain's gonna explode or something, right? I've got nothing to lose."

"Actually, I don't think you should let me go yet."

Astounded, Wayne looked at the kid again. He was perfectly serious.

"See, Wayne, think of it this way. It's like we're both hanging off opposite ends of this rope that's been slung over a high metal beam. Down in the pit under us there's these hungry lions and tigers waiting for us to fall."

Without wanting to, Wayne found the picture forming in his head. It didn't make that much sense, because he was so much heavier than Alex that his weight'd drag his side down in an instant. He put some gears and pulleys into the picture to even them up.

"Yeah, so?"

"This is the hard part. There's nets ready to spring out and catch us if we let go."

Wayne felt his irritation rising again. "That's a pretty stupid story. How can the wild animals hurt us if the nets are there?"

"There's a rule, Wayne. If you let go of your side of the rope before I do, you'll be saved by your net but I'll fall down and get eaten. Same for me, other way round."

"That's what I was just saying, you dumb kid. I can kill you any time I like. Why should I care if you get eaten by lions?"

"Because if you get caught by the net, Wayne, they've got you. They lock you up and throw away the key."

Wayne frowned, thinking it through. He felt somehow that his mind really was faster than it used to be, faster and clearer. Once, a puzzle like this would have thrown him into a shouting frenzy, or a cold narrow anger incapable of mapping the consequences. Since Rutherford. Since whatever that bastard had done to him. That much was clear to him, now that he thought about it. At best, he had been careful, diligent, and—blind. He'd acted out of trapped anger, and somehow never considered the nets and wild things. And the people he was hurting. Fern came into his mind, poor Fern. It made his eyes burn.

"We could both climb up our own end of the rope," Wayne said. "Hand over hand. Long as we balanced our weights so neither of us fell. When we got to the bar, we'd shimmy along it and climb out together."

"That's what I think we should do," Alex told him, head nodding. Wayne felt a burst of pride swell through him, and it was stupid, really stupid, here he was feeling so great because he'd solved a problem a goddamn ten year old had set up. But it was a good problem, he saw that. It was a great problem, and a great solution.

His damned hand was aching again. He pulled off his glove to rub the pain away against his thigh, glanced back a moment later, astonished, at the two pink things jutting out against the steering wheel. God almighty. They had tiny nails growing at the end. He'd been lying to himself the past couple of weeks. He hadn't been hitting his stumps on anything; that was just something he told himself to keep from being afraid of what was happening.

The fucking fingers were growing back.

Creeped out, he shot a sidelong glance at the kid, then another. A real look, seeing what was actually there rather than what he expected to see because he'd seen it before. In fact the boy's face looked fuller; his colour was pinker, healthier looking. It had to be Gibson's drug, this auxosome shit. It was fixing them up. Repairing the damage caused by disease and amputation. God damn.

He accelerated, heading west, out of town.