The Pedestal (44 page)

I’m suddenly very conscious of my scant attire. “What, this old thing?” I can feel myself blushing—and I don’t mean just my face.

“So how have you been?”

“Good. Well, actually—you know what? I’m feeling a little bit, uh, naked. Why don’t we have lunch and catch up?” I feel stupid as soon as I say this last part—I mean, what exactly is there to catch up on, considering our conversation this morning amounts to nearly half our total history?

“Little early for lunch, isn’t it?”

“Well, it’ll take some time to get there, you know.”

“You mean, you’d just jump on a plane and come all the way out here just to have lunch with me?”

I realize as I ponder her question that that’s the least of what I’d do for her, and I don’t even know her yet. I recognize just how ridiculous, how unhealthy my willingness is, but I’m in the habit of overlooking such details, and now is no exception.

“Wow, that’s really—”

“Creepy? Yeah, I guess it kind of is.”

“I was going to say romantic.”

“Really?”

Mitzy grins wistfully, pushing a lock of loose bangs behind her ear. “Yeah. But I’m thinking I’ll just save you the plane ticket and come to you.”

“Here? Oh, uh—”

“How about nine o’clock?”

Nine o’clock? It’s eight now. “Uh, do you mean tonight?”

“Are you really this lowQ?”

Boy, I wish I could say I wasn’t. “Absolutely.”

“See you at nine for breakfast. Clothing required.”

At ten ’til nine, my doorbell chimes. Until just now, I’ve completely forgotten I even have a doorbell. Pretty much everyone I know just knocks. I open the door with an elated snap, butterflies fluttering throughout my body with anticipation.

“Morning, Mr. Abby.”

Sigh.

“Inspector Rackley. You have a knack for catching me on my way out.”

“We all have our gifts. I just need a moment.”

I usher him in, though I’d just as soon toss him off the balcony right now. Inside, I lean against the wall and wait for an explanation. I don’t offer Rackley a seat, and he doesn’t ask for one.

“So?”

“You watched the news yet this morning?”

“Nope.”

He nods and chews his lip.

“Should we reconvene after I do, or are you going to save me the trouble?”

“There’s been another incident.”

“As in ... ?”

“Your blood plant; four more victims, this time in Dallas.”

“Jeez.”

“That’s not the worst of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I contacted the CDC; they’re reporting innumerable incidents of nonlethal contact with the plant.”

“Nonlethal contact?”

“It’s already establishing an invasive presence in the Midwest, popping up in places where no plant should be able to survive. It seems to grow at an alarming rate, too, and it’s got a lot of people on high alert.”

“Listen, Inspector, I wish there was something else I could do. But the truth is—”

“Yes?”

“Well, if past experience counts for anything here, it’s too late.”

Rackley crosses his arms. “What do you mean?”

Before I can answer, Mitzy knocks on my door, and for the briefest of moments, I forget that our world is quite probably coming to an end.

I send a somewhat miffed inspector on his way and escort Mitzy to Enrique’s for breakfast. They have the best chorizo omelets—if you’re into that sort of thing; turns out, Mitzy’s not. She settles for some sort of crepes, which look a little gross to me, but she seems to enjoy. I’m ecstatic to be in her presence, her living, breathing body inches from mine—but beneath the hum of excitement is the gnawing of fear.

“What’s wrong with your daygrid? It’s always blank.”

My cheeks flush. “I’m just that pathetic, I guess. So, what brings you to Chicago?”

“You have to ask?”

“Well, I don’t
have
to, but I have to.”

“Okay, if you must know, I moved here a while back.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, my roommate was killed and I just couldn’t stay in Vegas anymore.” Her eyes are glassing over.

For a moment, I’m tempted to let this pass; after all, what good can come of her knowing the truth? But as I look into her sweet eyes, I know that—although I never want to contribute to her pain—I’d rather cut her now than destroy her later. We finish our breakfast and return to my condo, holding hands like old lovers. My hand is trembling, and so is hers. I tell myself I’m just freaked out by what I have to tell her, but the truth is that my body is a raging mess of charges. Without my NanoPrint to regulate my chemical processes, I’m left to the underdeveloped power of my will to keep from running.

We sit on my couch, and before I can resolve to speak, she kisses me. It’s a long, sweet, passionate kiss that’s so visceral and real that I feel as though I’m flying away into a land that is Mitzy and nothing else. When she breaks away, there are tears gathered at the corners of my eyes. Not the sort of reaction women are looking for following such an event, I gather from her reaction.

“Listen, Mitzy. There’s something I need to tell you.” I squeeze her hand, because I know well that she’ll pull it away the moment she has an inkling of the truth.

She looks into my eyes, and seeing the intensity therein, her already drooping face falls a little more. She gives my hand a squeeze, and it seems to say,
Don’t, Wilson. Whatever you’re gonna do, just don’t.

Even now, knowing full well that I’m safe from Palmer Gunn, I’m afraid to speak of the past—so many people have died because of my loose lips. Yet I can’t allow myself to walk away from this—especially not now, with so much death looming on my doorstep. If I’m to be the man I aspire to be, I have to come clean. I have to do it, and my future with this lovely creature cannot be a consideration in that decision.

So I close my eyes and, taking a breath so deep that it hurts, I begin.

It’s after one in the morning, and I’m not sleeping. I’m lying here, doing my best to believe that life has meaning—that tomorrow has even the slightest chance of being better. But I’m no better at lying to myself than to anyone else. I’m not buying what I’m selling.

I expected Mitzy to be horrified by what I had to tell her—by me, and the senseless misery that my existence has inadvertently dragged into her life—and for once, I was right. The tears come now, and as each worms past my temples and tickles at my ears, I feel exhaustion gently push me into the consoling embrace of the darkness. As it turns out, there’s no sleep aid quite as powerful as grief. I sleep for the better part of the next twenty hours.

I’m being punished, I decide, though for what exactly is a question I can’t seem to resolve. I’ve always felt I was a good person at my core, so why all this? It’s a cruel thing for Mitzy to step in and out of my life with such brutal efficiency. But even if I don’t feel deserving of my fate, I know it’s a powerfully toxic force, and I don’t mean just in terms of the drama it has cast over Mitzy’s life. I get this strange sense, deep in my heart—where logic and culpability carry no weight—that I simply don’t deserve her. Maybe not because I’m particularly bad, but because I’m simply not good enough. It’s something I struggle to wrap my mind around, because it transcends the intellectual properties I rely on to make sense of the world.

Incidentally, I never felt this way about Adrian. Don’t get me wrong: I often felt that she didn’t make any sense in my life, as though we were an obtuse mismatch that favored me immeasurably, but I never felt that she was a better person, and therefore more deserving of happiness than me.

I leave a contact request with Tim, who’s doubtlessly immersed in a nexus game against some kid in Japan or something. I ask him to give me a holler without expressing a reason, because I don’t really have one. I feel as though my heart has been gouged, not in a deathly blow that will kill me quickly, but more like a sickly puncture that will bleed me out slowly.

With little else to do, I spend the rest of the day working on my secret program.

It’s not a terribly complicated program, but it contains more straight code than I’ve written in a long time. I’m used to tapping IDS’s immense corporate library of code classes—as in families of program functions rather than the instructional venues you might be thinking of—and in doing so, I’m spared the nuisance of reinventing the wheel throughout my projects. The problem with that approach to this program is that accessing those resources will leave an imprint in IDS’s system, registering the codebank to a project that isn’t supposed to exist. For Tim and me to circumvent the logs, I don’t have to just reinvent the wheel, but also the axles, and even the roads.

Fortunately, the pitiful state of my social life leaves plenty of time to work it all out. I just hope that in the end, we reap some fruit for all my efforts. The plan is to create an irresistible trap. My little program will carve out a new asset repository in our accounting system and hopefully entice Keith into making a grab for it. There’s a lot of opportunity for error—not only in the program, but with our lone participant, who must do her—I mean, his—unwitting part precisely.

Mrs. Grace stops by at seven thirty and invites me over for dinner. I decline without an excuse. She gives me a sweet hug that shows me she’s a very perceptive woman. She reminds me of my Aunt Gertrude.

I sit on my patio and sip tea, lonely and afraid—no longer only for myself, but for the world. For Mitzy, and Mrs. Grace. For Tim. And Misty Edwards, wherever she is these days.

In the movies, the faceless government comes for you in the middle of the night. In real life—at least in my own case—they come in the middle of breakfast. And they don’t bother knocking.

Before I can begin to react, I’m whisked from my condo and into a private tram, accompanied by three men who can only be described as nondescript and cold-blooded. They don’t speak a word, though one allows me a brief glance at his badge. He looks at me with great suspicion, and I realize that his credentials are probably readily available to my NanoPrint, which I must access manually.