Devoted, page 36
If the four killers were no longer a threat, they were for sure a problem.
Because of the Mysterium, which did not yet dare to be known.
“We’re in something of a fix,” Ben said, “but there’s a way out that’s less risky than it sounds.”
124
The lavish arcade in the Tiburon home contained forty-six pinball machines from different periods in the evolution of the game. Dorian preferred to play when all machines were lighted, because the flashing-pulsing backboard displays and the come-on music enlivened the place, made it feel like a real arcade in an amusement park or on a boardwalk somewhere. Now he activated the forty-six from a single switch just inside the arcade door.
Near the middle of the chamber, he decided to start with a kick-ass Gottlieb machine called Haunted House, which he and Haskell Ludlow had been aces at when they were kids. The deep game table had three levels: upstairs, main floor, and basement. There were eight flippers and various ramps and secret passageways for the ball, so sometimes you couldn’t guess from where it was going to appear. Because the machine was set up for free play, he didn’t need coins, and in maybe ten minutes, he was in the groove of it, as if he had played only yesterday.
One of Dorian Purcell’s rules for living a good life was that no matter what you were doing, whether it was building a giant tech company or banging your mistress, breaking a competitor and driving him into ruin or playing pinball, you had to commit to it as if it was everything, as if your very survival depended on it. He leaned into Haunted House, fiercely determined to beat his previous highest score, which the machine showed as 1,340,000 points. He worked the flippers with pinball-wizard finesse no less impressive than the keyboard work of a great concert pianist, played with body language, cheering each triumph, cursing every missed chance with such fervor that spittle sprayed across the glass that covered the game table.
Because of the theme music, clattering flippers, ringing bells, other sound effects, and his own exclamations, because of his intent focus on winning, he didn’t react to the words “Ochus Bochus,” which was an early form of hocus pocus and which he assumed came from the machine in a raspy voice, just one of its many spooky effects. His concentration began to falter only when he slowly realized that he smelled again the malodor he’d detected but couldn’t track down in the library and later in the kitchen. A ball escaped his control, slipped down the chute labeled Goodbye, and almost at once he lost another. He realized this would not be the day when he beat his previous highest score. With that recognition came a sudden keener awareness of the stink, which had gotten much stronger than before. He was not alone.
He turned, and Lee Shacket was three feet away. Shacket had been to this house three times during its construction, Purcell proudly showing it off. But this was Shacket monstrously changed, blistered and pocked with suppurating sores, scaly patches on his face, his eyelids red and swollen, and his eyes protruding as though subject to a terrible pressure in his skull. His lips were pale. No. Not just pale. White. Peeling and as white as flour, as if he had pressed his mouth into some acidic powder that burned the color out of his lips. He said, “Dorian,” his voice thick and gravelly.
The Haunted House pinball machine was at Dorian’s back. He would have to slip to the right, slide out of Shacket’s reach, and run for the arcade exit. He didn’t believe Shacket—this thing that once had been Shacket—could move fast, not in its condition. Dorian could escape, as he had always escaped the negative consequences of his actions. He could escape this, lock himself in one of the panic rooms, call for help. All he had to do was fake to the left and slip to the right and run.
But he couldn’t move. His muscles were locked. His body seemed to have turned to stone. “Dorian, I’m becoming. Do you see how I’m becoming?” It wasn’t just the terror of this creature that paralyzed Dorian Purcell, but something else, a greater horrific possibility that trembled at the back of his mind, that he couldn’t quite name. Or maybe he didn’t dare to name it, for fear that the naming of it would make actual what was at the moment only possible. “Becoming the king of predators,” Shacket said. He grinned, he licked his teeth, his tongue was as white as his lips. His teeth were stained, the spaces between them clogged with gray material, his breath foul, rancid. The tremulous thought that Dorian strove to avoid would not be repressed. Maybe it wasn’t his destiny to significantly extend the human life span, to live for hundreds of years; maybe he would not be one of the first transhumans, with vastly enhanced intellect and extraordinary powers. Maybe he would die as billions had died before him. Having lived with the conviction that the world could not evict him, he was paralyzed by the possibility of mortality.
When Shacket seized him by the arms with both hands, Dorian at last threw off the paralysis. He struggled, only to discover that this creature, even if terminal, was not weak, as he had thought, but inhumanly strong instead. The serum oozing from the sores in Lee Shacket’s hands was disgusting, potentially infectious, and so gluey that it penetrated Dorian’s shirt and seemed to bond with his skin. He felt something leeching into his biceps, so that the harder he strained to wrench free, the firmer became Shacket’s grip on him, until he made his most desperate effort and felt his muscle fibers tearing apart. Dorian’s scream of pain and fright and horror earned another grin from Shacket, who once more crowned himself: “I have become.” The former CEO of Refine tasted the arcade air with his white tongue and then he bit into the scream, bit and bit the tender lips.
125
Rodchenko had been taken upstairs and locked in a closet for the time being.
The humble study in the white clapboard house on the outskirts of Pinehaven did not look like the epicenter of a quake that would change the future. The storm that seared the night with lightning and shook it with thunder and hammered the house with rain might be taken, however, as a metaphor for the fury that great change often inspired.
Ben Hawkins knew this: The amazing bond between the Mysterium and humanity would change the world forever, but the world could not be radically changed overnight without widespread fear of the new and without dreadful consequences arising from that fear.
There would be profound dislocations, cultural and economic. There would be an impact on all religions and no less on science, for the majority of scientists in all disciplines were and always had been committed to theories as fiercely as political types were bound by ideology. Although science was never settled and was a perpetual process of discovery that undid past ideas, there were many who adamantly resisted all evidence that didn’t support the theories on which they had built their careers. Human beings could hate to the point of killing whom they hated, based on class and race and politics and religion and mere envy. When the dogs of the Mysterium brought the Wire to other people, through Woodrow Bookman, each person who received the telepathic ability would be henceforth unable to be deceived or deceive others on the Wire. People would be forced to confront the daunting fact that the truth they claimed to pursue and cherish was in fact a burden that they most often chose not to carry, that the lies they insisted they despised were instead often preferred to hard facts and cold reality. Even such wondrous and miraculous creatures as these beautiful dogs would soon become targets, as would the boy, as would all who wished to embrace the profound change ensuing from this ultimate refinement of the human-canine bond. A potential for violence on the scale of a holocaust could not be ruled out.
Ben argued—Megan, Rosa, Carson, and Kipp agreed—that the dogs of the Mysterium must be introduced to the world slowly, over years if not decades. The people who loved these dogs, who accepted the gift and burden of the Wire, must keep the secret of the Mysterium until communities of them and their human companions were everywhere in such numbers that the world had quietly changed from one steeped in deceit to one in which truth was more prevalent in human affairs than ever before. When the balance changed, when violence and theft and betrayal had diminished, they would know the moment had come to say to humanity: Here are the agents of the world as it has been evolving, our canine brothers and sisters on four legs, who have been our companions since time immemorial, who have always wanted nothing more from us than love and mutual defense against a cruel nature. They are not selfish or envious or arrogant. Join us for a tomorrow where the world is not deformed by the power mad, where every life matters, and where so much will be within our reach that once seemed forever beyond our grasp—even the stars.
The immediate problem was the four men from Atropos & Company.
For one thing, there was no trustworthy authority to which they might be transferred. Sheriff Eckman had withdrawn protection from Megan and Woody even knowing that they were targeted. According to Carson, the attorney general of California, Tio Barbizon, had been bought by someone, most likely by Dorian Purcell, who had paid for Jason Bookman’s “accident” and sent Atropos to Pinehaven. In recent years, the once sterling reputation of the FBI had been tarnished. These days, no one could say with certainty who could be trusted.
For another and more important reason, Ben didn’t want to turn these four men over to the law. Verbotski, Knacker, Rodchenko, and Speer didn’t know much about the dogs that had defeated them today, but they were aware that these creatures were extraordinary, that they were more than mere dogs, and that their human companions knew the truth of them. This was the last thing that Ben wanted anyone to be reporting to any authorities.
Sitting in an armchair with Kipp in her lap, Rosa Leon said, “But what do we do with them?”
“We’re not going to kill them,” Megan said.
“Of course not,” Ben agreed. “We’re going to do the only thing we can do—let them go.”
Carson Conroy turned from a window, where he’d been watching the rain and lightning with perhaps a sense that they would be a long time passing through the different storm that would soon come upon them. “Let them go? Four professional killers? What have I missed?”
Ben explained what he had in mind. “So we turn them loose and trust that they continue to be who they have always been.”
“If it doesn’t go the way you expect, we bear responsibility for whatever they do,” Megan said.
“We do, we will,” Ben agreed. “The only way to avoid that is to kill them now and bury them here.”
After a long mutual silence, Rosa said, “I think Ben has them figured out. There aren’t any easy answers. We can’t start a better future with four murders.”
Carson went out into the storm to search the black Suburban in which the killers had come, to make sure it contained no weapons.
Ben went first to talk with Verbotski, who was restrained with Knacker and Speer in the living room. And then he went upstairs to speak with Rodchenko.
126
In the second guest bedroom, Ben removed the straight-backed chair from under the doorknob and opened the closet door. Rodchenko waited with his hands zip tied behind him.
Ben directed him to sit on the edge of the bed. Rodchenko sat.
“We’re letting you go.”
The killer looked surprised. “Why me?”
“Not just you. All four of you.”
This alarmed Rodchenko. “That makes no sense. Why are you doing this?”
“You don’t have to understand. You just have to go and not come back. I’ve discussed it with Verbotski.”
Rodchenko shook his head. “No. You can’t do this. They know I ratted them out. They’ll kill me.”
“You didn’t rat them out. We used the thiopental and the other crap. You had no choice but to talk.”
“Yeah, well, they know the dogs scared the piss out of me. They know that I’d have talked without the drugs, and they don’t know for sure you ever used them on me.”
Ben sat beside him and patted his knee. “I understand, amigo. I’ve dealt with a lot of murderous assholes in my life. No offense. There isn’t much loyalty among you folks. So because you cooperated, I’ll give you a little something for self-defense.”
Rodchenko looked hopeful. “A gun?”
“Not a chance. Verbotski and the others are already being taken out to the Suburban. After I free you from that zip tie, I’ll walk you downstairs. Just before you go out the door, I’ll provide you with Speer’s nasty switchblade and one of those pressurized cans of chloroform you were going to use on us.”
“But there’s three of them.”
“Sorry, that’s the best I can do.”
“What have you given them?”
“Nothing. They didn’t cooperate.”
“I hope that’s true.”
“Don’t call me a liar, amigo.”
“Will the dogs be downstairs?”
“I’ll walk you through them.”
“There’s something weird about those dogs.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“And who’re all those people down there?”
“Friends. We’re all in the same kennel club.”
127
Megan, Rosa, and Ben had been cooking most of the day, so there was enough food for an army.
Kipp thought all these people were an army of sorts. An army of the just.
People were mingling, laughing, eating.
Making new friends.
They all smelled nice. None smelled like a Hater.
Not now that the four from Atropos were gone.
Of course, Shacket was still out there somewhere.
Maybe he would come back, maybe not.
Kipp would smell that one from a long way off.
The dogs were mingling, laughing telepathically, eating what had been specially prepared for them.
Hamburgers. Chicken breasts. Rice and carrots cooked in chicken broth. Potatoes.
The gathering was very nice.
It would have been so much nicer if Dorothy had been here.
And if Jason Bookman had been here.
In a way, they were here. In the hearts of those who had loved them.
What an amazing two days these had been. From a deathbed to the birth of a new world.
It was like a story in a book.
But the real world was more fantastic than fiction.
Everyone here this night knew how fantastic the world was.
There was a growing expectation in the house. They were aware of how the evening would end.
Some of the people were a little afraid. But only a little.
Kipp could smell how small their fear was.
As an hour passed and then another, people looked more and more often to the boy who once could not talk.
He was so small, but the future was on his shoulders.
He could carry it. Even if he did still eat each kind of food in its separate dish, he could carry the future.
At last a silence came upon those gathered, a mutual sense that the moment had come.
Megan took Woody by the hand. “Sweetie, are you ready?”
“I am if everyone else is.”
“They are,” she said. “We are.”
Ben Hawkins went to Megan and held her hand.
Rosa Leon went to Ben and took his hand.
Carson Conroy took Rosa’s hand.
Although there was no need for them to link hands, though it could be done with them standing apart, they joined hands anyway.
Joined hands from the living room into the foyer.
From the foyer along the hallway.
From the hallway into the dining room.
Into the kitchen.
Into Megan’s studio, where the painting of Woody and the deer, the family of deer, waited to be finished.
Everyone stood hand in hand throughout the house.
The dogs pressed against their people’s legs.
Now Woody did what Bella had done for him, what she had showed him how to do for others.
He did what only Woody alone in all the world could do for other human beings.
To all the people assembled, Woody gave the gift and the burden of the Wire.
Had there been people present not gifted, the house would have seemed to them eerily silent but for the storm that beat on the roof and windows.
But to those who had received, the house was filled with joyful greetings and excited conversations.
Even one who was deaf to all of those voices would nevertheless have sensed the wonder and emotion swelling from heart to heart to heart.
Later, when the rain passed, all the visitors would return to their homes in distant places.
Something was happening out there.
For the foreseeable future, the best thing the Mysterium and their beloved companions could do was wait and let it happen.
128
With the windshield wipers beating like drums in a funeral cortege and the darkness suggestive of the grave, Verbotski drove from the Bookman house to the Oxley place, where they’d left their luggage and Charles Oxley’s corpse.
He’d wanted Rodchenko to ride in the front passenger seat, where he could keep an eye on him. But the bastard would have none of that. He obviously worried about being garroted from behind or otherwise wasted.
Speer rode shotgun, and Rodchenko sat in back with Knacker.
“If they drained our computers and sent all that shit to whoever, then we can’t go back to Reno, we’re finished,” Knacker said, because he was the stupidest among them.
