Roadside Picnic (18 page)

“She understands less and less – almost nothing any more,” Guta said softly. He stopped talking, picked up the glass with both hands, and absently twirled it.

“You’re not asking how we’re doing,” she continued. “And you’re right. Except that you’re an old friend, Dick, and we have no secrets from you. And there’s no way to keep it a secret anyway.”

“Have you seen a doctor?” he asked without looking up.

“Yes. They can’t do a thing. And one of them said ... ” She stopped talking.

He was silent too. There was nothing to say about it and he didn’t want to think about it either. Suddenly he had a horrible thought: it was an invasion. Not a roadside picnic, not a prelude to contact. It was an invasion. They can’t change us, so they get into the bodies of our children and change them in their own image. He felt a chill, but then he remembered that he had read something like that in a paperback with a lurid cover, and he felt better. You can imagine anything at all. And real life is never what you imagine.

“And one of them said that she’s no longer human.”

“Nonsense,” Noonan said hollowly. “You should go to a real specialist. Go see James Cutterfield. Do you want me to talk to him? I’ll arrange an appointment.”

“You mean the Butcher?” She laughed nervously. “Don’t bother. Thanks, Dick, but he’s the one who said so. I guess it’s fate.”

When Noonan dared to look up again, Monkey was gone and Guta was sitting motionless, her mouth half-open, her eyes empty, and a long gray ash on her cigarette. He pushed his glass over to her.

“Make me another, please, and one for yourself. We’ll have a drink.”

The ash fell and she looked around for a place for the butt. She threw it into the garbage can.

“Why? That’s what I can’t understand! We’re not the worst people in the city.”

Noonan thought that she was going to cry, but she didn’t. She opened the refrigerator, got the vodka and juice, and took another glass down from the cabinet.

“Don’t give up hope. There’s nothing in the world that can’t be fixed. And believe me, Guta, I have very important connections. I’ll do everything that I can.”

He believed what he was saying and he was mentally going over the list of his connections in various cities, and it seemed to him that he had heard about similar cases, and that they had seemed to have ended happily. He just had to remember where it was and who the physician was. But then he remembered Mr. Lemchen, and he remembered why he had befriended Guta, and then he didn’t want to think about anything at all. He scattered all his thoughts of connections, got comfortable in his chair, relaxed, and waited for his drink.

There were shuffling steps and a thumping in the hall and he could hear the more-than-ever repulsive voice of Buzzard Burbridge.

“Hey, Red! Looks like your Guta is entertaining someone. I see a hat. If I were you, I wouldn’t leave them alone.”

Red’s voice: “Watch your false leg, Buzzard. Shut your mouth. There’s the door, don’t forget to leave. It’s time for my dinner.”

“Damn it, can’t even make a little joke.”

“We’ve had all the jokes we’ll ever have. Period. Now get going!”

The lock clicked and the voices were quieter. Obviously they had gone out on the landing. Burbridge said something in an undertone, and Redrick replied: “That’s all, we’ve had our talk!” More grumbling from Burbridge and Redrick’s harsh: “I said that’s it!” The door slammed, there were loud fast steps in the hall, and Redrick Schuhart appeared in the kitchen doorway. Noonan rose to greet him, and they warmly shook hands.

“I was sure it was you,” Redrick said, looking Noonan over with his quick greenish eyes. “Putting on weight, fatso! Keep putting it away, eh? I see you’re passing the time of day pleasantly enough. Guta, old love, make one for me, too. I’ve got to catch up.”

“We haven’t even started yet. How can anyone get ahead of you?”

Redrick laughed harshly and punched Noonan in the shoulder.

“Now we’ll see who catches up and who gets ahead! Come on, let’s go, what are we doing out here in the kitchen? Guta, bring on the dinner.”

He reached into the refrigerator and came out with a bottle with a bright label.

“We’ll have ourselves a feast!” he announced. “We have to treat our best friend Richard Noonan royally, for he does not desert his pals in their moment of need! Even though he is of no help whatever. Too bad Gutalin’s not here.”

“Why don’t you call him?” Noonan suggested.

Redrick shook his bright red head.

“They haven’t laid the phone lines to where he is tonight. Let’s go.”

He went into the living toom and slammed the bottle on the table.

“We’re going to celebrate, pops!” he said to the motionless old man. “This here is Richard Noonan, our friend! Dick, this is my pop, Schuhart Senior.”

Richard Noonan, his mind rolled up into an impenetrable ball, grinned from ear to ear, waved, and said in the direction of the moulage:

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Schuhart. How are you? You know, we’ve met before, Red,” he said to Schuhart, Jr., who was puttering at the bar. “We saw each other once, but very briefly, of course.”

“Sit down,” Redrick said to him, indicating the chair opposite the old man. “If you’re going to talk to him, speak up. He can’t hear a thing.”

He set up the glasses, quickly opened the bottle, and turned to Noonan.

“You pour. Just a little for pops, just cover the bottom.”

Noonan took his time pouring. The old man sat in the same position, staring at the wall. And he did not react when Noonan moved his glass closer to him. Noonan had already adjusted to the new situation. It was a game, terrible and pathetic. Red was playing the game, and he joined in, as he had always joined other peoples’ games all his life – terrifying ones, pathetic ones, shameful ones, and ones much more dangerous than this. Redrick raised his glass and said: “Well, I guess we’re off?” Noonan looked over at the old man in a completely natural manner. Redrick impatiently clinked his glass against Noonan’s and said: “We’re off, we’re off.” Then Noonan nodded, completely naturally, and they drank.

Redrick, eyes shining, began to talk in his excited and slightly artificial tone.

“That’s it, brother! Jail will never see me again. If you only knew how good it is to be home; I have the dough and I’ve picked out a new little cottage for myself, with a garden – as good as Buzzard’s place. You know, I had wanted to emigrate, I had decided when I was still in jail. I mean, what was I sitting in this lousy two-bit town for? I thought, let the whole place drop dead. So I get back, and there’s a surprise for me – emigration has been forbidden! Have we suddenly become plague-ridden during the last two years?”

He talked and talked, and Noonan nodded, sipped his whiskey, and interjected sympathetic noises and rhetorical questions. Then he started asking about the cottage – what kind was it, where was it, what did it cost? – and then they argued. Noonan insisted that the cottage was expensive and inconveniently located. He took out his address book, flipped through it, and named the locations of abandoned cottages that were being sold for a song. And the repairs would be almost free, because he could apply for emigration, be turned down, and sue for compensation, which would pay for the repairs.

“I see that you’re involved in nonemigration, too.”

“I’m involved in everything a little,” Noonan replied with a wink.

“I know, I know, I’ve heard all about your affairs.”

Noonan put on a wide-eyed look of surprise, raised his finger to his pursed lips, and nodded in the direction of the kitchen.

“All right, don’t worry, everybody knows about it,” Redrick said. “Money never stinks. I know that for sure now. But getting Mosul to be your manager. I almost fell on the floor laughing when I heard! Letting a bull into the china shop. He’s a psycho, you know. I’ve known him since we were kids.”

He fell silent and looked at the old man. A shudder crossed his face, and Noonan was amazed to see the look of real, sincere love and tenderness on that tough freckled mug of his.

Watching him, Noonan remembered what had happened when Boyd’s lab workers showed up here for the moulage. There were two lab assistants, both strong young men, athletes and all that, and a doctor from the city hospital with two orderlies, tough and rough burly guys used to lugging heavy stretchers and overpowering hysterical patients. One of the lab assistants later told him that “that redhead” at first didn’t seem to understand what was going on, because he let them into the apartment to examine his father. They probably would have gotten the old man away, because it looked as if Redrick thought that they were putting his old man in the hospital for observation. But the stupid orderlies, who had spent their time during the preliminary negotiations gawking at Guta washing the kitchen windows, grabbed the old man like a log when they were called in – and dropped him on the floor. Redrick went crazy. Then the jerk of a doctor volunteered an explanation of what was going on. Redrick listened for a minute or two and suddenly exploded without any warning like a hydrogen bomb. The assistant who told the story did not remember how he ended up on the street. The red devil got them all down the stairs, all five of them, and not one left under his own power. They all shot out of the foyer like cannonballs. Two ended up unconscious on the sidewalk and Redrick chased the other three for four blocks. Then he returned and bashed in all the windows on the institute car – the driver had made a run for it when he saw what was happening.

“I learned how to make a new cocktail at this bar,” Redrick was saying as he poured more whiskey. “It’s called Witches’ Jelly, I’ll make you one later, after we’ve eaten. Brother, it’s not something you should have on an empty stomach – it’s dangerous to the health: one drink makes your arms and legs numb. I don’t care what you say, Dick, I’m going to treat you royally today. We’ll remember the good old days and the Borscht. Poor old Ernie is still in the cooler, you know that?” He drank, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and casually asked: “What’s new at the institute? Have they tackled witches’ jelly yet? You know, I sort of fell behind science a bit.”

Noonan understood why Redrick was bringing up the topic. He threw up his hands in dismay.

“Are you kidding? Did you know what happened with that jelly? Have you heard of the Currigan Labs? There’s this little private supplier ... So they got themselves some jelly ... ”

He told him about the catastrophe. And about the shocking fact that they never tied up the loose ends, never found out where the lab had gotten it. Redrick listened, feigning distraction, clucking his tongue, and shaking his head. He decisively splashed more whiskey into their glasses.

“That’s what they deserve, the bloodsuckers. I hope they all choke.”

They drank. Redrick looked over at his father and a shudder crossed his face once more.

“Guta!” he shouted. “Are you going to starve us much longer? She’s knocking herself out for you, you know,” he told Noonan. “She wants to make your favorite salad, with crabmeat. She bought a supply a while ago just in case you turned up. Well, how are things at the institute in general? Found anything new? I hear you have robots working full force but not getting too much out of it.”

Noonan started in on institute business, and while he was talking, Monkey appeared noiselessly at the table by the old man. She stood there with her hairy paws on the table and then in a perfectly childlike way, she leaned against the moulage and put her head on his shoulder. Noonan went on chatting but thought, as he looked at those two horrors born of the Zone: My God, what else? What else has to be done to us before we understand? Isn’t this enough? But he knew that it wasn’t. He knew that millions upon millions of people knew nothing and wanted to know nothing, and even if they found out would ooh and aah for five minutes and then go back to their own routines. It was time to go, he thought wildly. The hell with Burbridge, the hell with Lemchen, and the hell with this goddamned family!

“What are you staring at them for?” Redrick asked softly. “Don’t worry, it won’t harm her. They even say that they generate good health.”

“Yes, I know,” Noonan said and drained his glass.

Guta came in, ordered Redrick to set the table, and set a large silver bowl with Noonan’s favorite salad on the table.

“Well, friends,” Redrick announced. “Now we’re going to have ourselves a feast!”

REDRICK
SCHUHART
,
AGE
31

The valley had cooled overnight, and by dawn it was actually cold. They were walking along the embankment, stepping over the rotten ties between the rusty rails, and Redrick watched the drops of condensed fog glisten on Arthur Burbridge’s leather jacket. The boy was striding along lightly and merrily, as though the exhausting night, the nervous tension that still made every vein in his body ache, and the two horrible hours they spent huddled back to back for warmth in a tortured half-sleep on top of the hill, waiting for the flood of the green stuff to drip past them and disappear into the ravine – as though all that had not happened.

A thick fog lay along the sides of the embankment. Once in a while it crawled up on the rails with its heavy gray feet and in those places they walked knee-deep in the swirling mists. The air smelled of rust, and the swamp to the right of the embankment reeked of decay. The fog made it impossible to see anything, but Redrick knew that a hilly plain with rubble heaps surrounded them, and that mountains hid in the gloom beyond. And he knew also that when the sun came up and the fog settled into dew, he would see the downed helicopter somewhere on his left and the ore flatcars up ahead. And then the real work would begin.

Redrick slipped his hand up under the backpack to lift it so that the edge of the helium tank would not dig into his spine. It’s a heavy bugger, he thought. How am I going to crawl with it? A mile on all fours. All right, stalker, no grumbling now, you knew what you were getting into. Five hundred thousand at the end of the road. I can work up a sweat for that. Five hundred thousand sure is a sweet bundle. I’ll be damned if I give it to them for less. Or if I give Buzzard more than thirty. And the punk? The punk gets nothing. If the old bugger had told even half the truth, the punk gets nothing.