Death Qualified (55 page)

    "Now, let's have it." He poured for them both.

    "Nothing to have! I want out. I've wanted out for a long time, but it seemed, oh, I don't know, indecent, I guess.

    Now I don't care. Out."

    "Is there someone else?"

    Doc jumped up so fast he nearly knocked his chair over.

    He caught and steadied it, and then sat down again.

    "Not like that. I mean Not like that."

    Frank regarded him morosely. Barbara had told him about Doc and Nell, but that was over, he was certain.

    "Okay," he said.

    "But you should see a marriage counselor, you know. Differences can be reconciled if both people want reconciliation."

    "I don't! Christ! I said I want out. That's all."

    "Do you expect her to fight it?"

    "Oh, sure. Tooth and claw."

    Frank's sigh was mournful. It would be messy, nasty, dirty, filthy, all the things he hated.

    "You'll want to talk to one of my associates, then. Sandra Seligman would be good. You know I don't do divorces, myself."

    "Come off it, Frank!" He ran his hands through his thin hair and nearly knocked his cup over with his elbow.

    Frank grabbed it and moved it away from him.

    "Anyone can do a simple divorce. I could get a kit and do it myself.

    I took care of you through a lot of stuff that's not my specialty."

    "Kicking and screaming all the way," Frank snapped back at him.

    "And you could have turned me over to a specialist at any time, you know."

    "Well, I didn't. I don't want Sandra whoever she is."

    "This isn't going to be a simple divorce, you idiot!

    There's property, and investments, and insurance, and your earnings, today's and in the future. What kind of picture will she make in a divorce court in her wheelchair? She'll clean you out down to your holiest socks!"

    "I know all that," Doc said almost meekly.

    "I just don't care. Help me, Frank. I want you to do it. I'm taking her down to her sister's place in Palm Springs this evening.

    For Thanksgiving." He laughed, a short, bitter sound that was almost a sob.

    "Thanksgiving. I'll tell her Friday, down there. We'll talk on Saturday, and I'll fly home Sunday.

    She won't come back with me. Not yet. She'll have her sister to comfort her and scheme with her and plan revenge, whatever. That's all right, too. After that, I don't know. Probably I'll stay in town. I just want to know you'll take care of things. I don't expect you to work miracles.

    Just try to keep my skin intact. That's acceptable."

    "Goddamn it all to hell!" Frank muttered.

    "I might not even be able to do that much for you." He drummed his fingers on the table for a minute, then said deliberately, "Listen, Doc, when I was sick you did some pretty damn embarrassing things to me. My turn. And you sit in that chair and answer, or I'll toss you out. I know about you and Nell. Goddamn it, I said sit still!"

    Doc was up and out of his chair faster than Frank could reach out to stop him. He ran to the sliding door and stood with his shoulders hunched looking out.

    "Okay, answer from there. I don't give a damn, just tell me what I need to know. Is it over with you two?"

    Doc nodded.

    "Since when?"

    "Late summer, early fall. I don't know."

    "Did Jessie ever indicate to you that she knew?"

    "Never. Not until she testified. I never guessed."

    Abruptly he swung around and returned to the table. He put both hands on it and leaned forward.

    "She knew. God knows how long, but she knew. It was her idea for Nell to start going out with Clive. She said it was unnatural for such a pretty young woman not to date; the police would find that suspicious. And everyone around here knew she never gave him the time of day until after Lucas was dead;

    no scandal could possibly be attached to that pairing. I believed her. God help me, I believed her, that she wanted to help Nell. But she was taunting me all the time, and she was afraid after Lucas died, afraid I might.... I don't know, do what I'm doing now, I guess."

    "Oh, Moses in a basket," Frank muttered.

    "But she wouldn't admit it for a million dollars," Doc said fiercely.

    "She's too arrogant to admit a younger woman came along, that her husband might have played around, that she wasn't the only star in his universe. She won't admit that." He smiled crookedly, amirthless grimace.

    "It would hurt her more than me, and she knows it. I've reached the point where I don't give a shit who knows what, and she knows that, too."

    Frank did not bother to tell him that many people undergoing a filthy divorce would step gladly into the pit if they knew the recently beloved would end up there, also.

    Instead, he sighed.

    "Okay, give me a call when you get back in town. And think about it hard before you start that little talk with her, will you?"

    Doc shrugged.

    "I told her I was coming over to give you our key, so you can have a look around now and then.

    Here it is. No lies. Thank God, no more lies after this rotten weekend is over." He snapped a key off his chain and put it on the table.

    He left soon after that, as jumpy as he had been on arriving, but with a new determination that made all his motions seem more directed, not simply the aimless, blind restlessness of a desperately unhappy man.

    Frank opened the living room door to see Barbara kneeling at the side of the couch, holding Mike's hand.

    Shaking her head, she placed the hand back under the cover and stood up.

    "I thought he was coming awake. He was moving, but that's all, just moving. It moves, it breathes, it's alive!"

    "You need a drink. And I can use a drink. Come on, let's see to that, and I'll fill you in on Doc's new backbone.

    Interesting Filipino doctor got hold of him and inserted it without drawing a drop of blood, far as I could see."

    When he told her what Doc's plans were, she cursed.

    At his questioning look, she said darkly, "Nothing. Just another little thread snipped off, that's all. If Jessie leaves without telling anyone if and what she might know about Lucas's death, we'll never find out. I'm with Doc in that.

    She probably won't come back here. Too proud."

    "Honey, she wouldn't lift her little pinkie to help Nell, no matter what. You know that as well as I do."

    After dinner, Frank dozed in his chair; Barbara tried to concentrate on the book she had been trying to concentrate on all day. She tried rephrasing what she had read: The normal human heartbeat is not regular. There is a random irregularity that is now recognized as healthy. Good. She nodded at the book. When the heartbeat becomes very regular, a heart attack might follow. When it becomes chaotic to an extreme, fibrillation can cause death in minutes.

    Then the author had gone on to discuss the brain and its waves, also randomly irregular. The flicker effect can synchronize the brain waves in a regular pattern in some people, and the result can be a sudden swing into turbulence, a chaotic electrical activity: a seizure. Good, she told herself again.

    All God's children got irregularities, she thought. Irregularity, the bane of Western civilization.

    Abruptly she was remembering one of the articles Ruth Brandywine had written, one not dealing with adolescent learning patterns. This had dealt with channels. Synapses.

    All open at birth, receptive, and then one after another.

    closing, to become inaccessible, out of reach forever. Unless someone like Emil Frobisher found a way to open them again, Barbara thought then.

    Physiological changes occur, Brandywine had claimed, irreversible changes that also affect the chromosomes. Mutagenic changes. Drugs can cause mutagenic changes, ionizing radiation can, and synaptic realignments of the brain.

    Barbara closed her eyes hard, trying to visualize again the accompanying diagrams and pictures of brain tissue and chromosomal studies from children who had died before and after the acquisition of language, before and after walking, before and after reading skills were mastered.

    Brandywine's critics had said she was talking about the process of maturation, nothing more than that. She had claimed that infants could focus their eyes at birth--an incontestable statement--but that most of them rarely did, not until there had been sufficient reinforcement. After they learned to focus them in approved ways, they could no longer perceive whatever it was they had been seeing before that. What caused infants to have night terrors? she had asked, and answered: a turbulent brain system receiving too much data, all contradictory and overwhelming.

    The brain was sent into a state of turbulence that was the proximate cause of night terrors that persisted until reinforcement of some synapses made connections that overrode other connections that were then severed, not to be joined again. Throughout childhood the channels continued to close, although not at the same rate as the two-year period of turbulence. Children with eidetic memories lost that ability when they learned to read. Children who had a telepathic rapport with (heir parents--most children, she had claimed--lost that ability when they became socialized.

    And each change, she had written, was accompanied by a distinctive physiological change and an alteration in the chromosomes.

    Barbara slipped without transition into a dream. She was ice-skating on the river, which had frozen solid from bank to bank. The ice was incredibly clear, to the point of invisibility;

    below, she could see the fish peering up at her with eyes like buttons, never blinking. She sped over the clear ice, exhilarated by the freedom, by the swiftness and ease of motion. She was flying, she thought joyously. Although she knew that ahead, beyond the next curve, or the next, the river churned and boiled, she skated with the abandon, the happiness of a child who has no future, only the immediate now. She laughed.

    Her dream laughter woke her. She jerked upright in her chair; the book slid off her lap, and when she reached down to retrieve it, she glanced at the couch and cried out.

    Mike was sitting up, looking straight ahead with a preoccupied expression.

    "Are you all right?" she asked uncertainly. She was immobilized by fear, her voice hoarse, strained.

    "I think so," he said after a hesitation. He brought his gaze in from where it had been and looked at her.

    "I think so," he said again.

    Frank was sitting rigidly on the edge of his chair. Mike glanced at him and shook his head.

    "I don't think I'm dangerous," he said.

    Frank grinned, but it was a faked expression that did not reach his eyes.

    "You must be hungry," he said without relaxing a single muscle.

    "Yes, I suppose I am."

    Still no one moved. Then Mike said, "I had a friend in college who had epilepsy. After a seizure he would sleep for hours; when he woke up he always said he felt peaceful, but very tired. That's how I feel, very peaceful, and very tired. I suppose I must be hungry. What time is it?"

    "After nine," Frank said. He glanced at Barbara.

    "Why don't you go make him some scrambled eggs and toast.

    Something light and quick."

    She caught in her breath with the realization that her father was afraid to leave her with Mike, who had that strange, preoccupied expression again, looking off into the distance, as if he had forgotten they were there. Wordlessly she got up and walked out to the kitchen.

    When the eggs were ready, Mike ate a bite or two, then put down his fork.

    "Guess I was wrong." Abruptly he stood up and looked around the kitchen as if seeing it for the first time; he rubbed his eyes and sank into the chair again.

    "I have to go home," he said.

    "We can't let you go off alone," Barbara said.

    "My God, what happened to you? How are you? How do you feel?" Her voice rose with anger suddenly, and she slammed down a cup of coffee; most of it splashed out, a mini-tidal wave racing over the table. She ignored it.

    "Answer me! You were asleep all day. They burned the disks. Do you even care? Say something!"

    He regarded her almost thoughtfully.

    "They had to burn the disks," he said.

    "I understand why Emil Frobisher killed that laughing boy. Not because the kid was able to use the process, make it work, but because Emil Frobisher couldn't, and he knew he couldn't. It must have been like giving the thumb to a fellow ape, knowing you could not have a thumb, that you were going to stay in the trees the rest of your life while he learned to make fire, make tools, write books. Evolution doesn't ask if you want it or not, it happens or it doesn't. Frobisher made it happen, and then made it un happen and then killed himself. He must have known he was a blind man with the power to create a one-eyed king."