Xeno Sapiens (18 page)

As she dozed by his bedside, vivid
dreams sprang to life almost immediately. Her eyes darted rapidly
beneath her lids, REM sleep surfacing immediately, having been
squelched for the last day and a half.

The year was 1989 and she was nine
years old, with her aunt Gertrude in an auditorium full of people.
The venue had been reserved for a Josh Hall revival. All the men in
the audience and on stage seemed to be dressed in identical,
pinstriped suits with wide, ’40’s style lapels and a carnation on
the breast. They wore black, plastic framed glasses and their hair
was slicked back with pomade. Flakes of dandruff drifted to some of
the suit shoulders and the men’s trouser hems seemed to stop an
inch or so above their dull, scraped shoes.

Their hands were all too large, like
those cartoons where Daffy Duck smashes his fingers with a hammer.
They held those big hands out to Ingrid, all red and hard and
callused in the low light of the auditorium. Blue-black veins rose
from the backs of the hands like tubes beneath the thin,
age-spotted skin.

There was a murmur in the auditorium, a
million voices barely penned-up by some unseen power. Everyone
stood as Josh Hall paraded on stage, flanked by his entourage. They
kept well back, not daring to steal the limelight from the featured
player.

“
The Lord is in this place tonight,”
he said into the microphone. His voice boomed and rolled through
the PA system. Ingrid heard moans and saw several women begin to
sway back and forth. Their faces were rapt with religious ecstasy,
eyes closed, lips moving soundlessly.

“
There are those here who need the
love and guidance of the Lord,” he said to the revivalists. The
congregation swayed more strongly, a sea kept in check by its own
human borders. Ingrid smelled the crowd, felt the heat building,
like an oven being brought to its highest range. Hall was exhorting
the crowd, pumping them up, raising the heat. Candles had been lit
on stage and everything seemed to move sluggishly through a red
glow.

Ingrid felt the press of the multitude
on her frail, thirty pound body. Aunt Gertrude was moving toward
the stage, her eyes fixed on the magnetic presence of Josh Hall.
She held Ingrid tightly, like an offering.

“
Those of you who need to feel the
love of the Lord, come on stage now.” He began to speak more
rapidly, his voice rising and resonating. Hundreds began to move
toward the stage, lining up single file at the stairs. Hall
continued, now sounding like a hellfire and brimstone,
bible-bashing minion of The Lord.

“
There are those of you who are sick.
Sick in mind, sick in body, sick in spirit. There are those who
believe the Lord is gone away, but He’s listening to your prayers.
Have you turned your face from the Lord?”

More wails from the audience. Ingrid
was frightened. She was scheduled for admission to the hospital the
next day for her surgery. She was a nine year old girl, fearful for
her life and not wise in the workings of the Lord. Faces loomed
against her. Hands were extended toward her as she was carried on
stage. She looked around in a wild panic. People on crutches
struggled up the stairs, assisted by smiling ushers.

Skinny men and blind men. Men in
overalls and work boots. Men in somber suits and hideous plaid and
stripe combinations. Pretty women in pleasant dresses led young
children and oldsters with canes on to the stage. Middle aged women
with no escorts made their way slowly forward, their feet
shuff-shuffing on the concrete floor, their ponderous rear ends
rolling like a turbulent sea beneath their polyester slacks. An
old, bald headed gent wearing a dark suit pulled his foot from the
floor. A wad of chewing gum had stuck to the sole of his shoe. A
sliver of pale, white leg showed above his black, nylon
sock.

“
Show the Lord your
love
,” Hall implored. “Make your testament, ask for healing.
Ask for forgiveness and it will be given.” Sweat ran down the sides
of his face in two tiny streams. He started to shout, to huckster,
his eyes bulging dangerously. Distended veins stood out on his
throat.

“
Pray for the sick,”
he yelled. “Pray
for the infirm. Pray for your brothers and sisters who have yet to
find the light of the Lord. Make your public testimony to the Lord
and you will be blessed with everlasting life.” He raised his bible
over his head. “Receive the Lord and after the rapture we will all
gaze down on the great day of Armageddon and watch the army of the
Lord smash down the walls of hell!”

Hall brought his bible down in a
smashing gesture, as if smiting Satan himself.

The congregation was in a frenzy,
threatening to boil over the stage in a human storm surge. Aunt
Gertrude bore Ingrid across the stage, tears of joy welling from
her eyes. The huge, red hands reached for Ingrid and closed around
her ears, squeezing her head with unbearable pressure.

Josh Hall took it upon himself to touch
Ingrid, relieving some of his party from the responsibility of the
laying on of hands.

“
Be blessed, little one,”
he bellowed into
Ingrid’s face. “The Lord will shower you with blessings!
Feel
His
power working! Feel
His
touch!”

Aunt Gertrude babbled with gratitude.
Ingrid felt only fear. Fear of the crowd, fear of the man with the
loud voice and red cast on his face, fear at the touch of the God
of Abraham this man claimed to transfer.

“
She’s going in for heart surgery
tomorrow,” Aunt Gertrude gushed. “Thank God we came to see you
tonight!”

“
Put not your faith in doctors, little
one, but only in the Lord,” Hall said to Ingrid. “The Lord will
pull you through. He would not call home one so young and full of
promise so soon.”

Ingrid was crying, tears running down her pallid face. Hall
smiled, but never asked her name. Others pushed Aunt Gertrude from
behind, urging them forward. Ingrid saw a man pitch backward as he
was touched and he was caught by waiting attendants before he hit
the floor. People were babbling and moaning like the wail of a
cruel wind, full of suffering and pain. Moaning
, moaning...

Clifton thrashed in his sleep, pulling
away from the effects of the Curare. His breath came in sharp,
hiccuping whoops that expanded his rib cage to the breaking point.
Ingrid jerked awake. She reached over quickly and put her hand on
Clifton’s head to keep it still. The gesture brought the nightmare
back in awful detail and Ingrid felt suddenly nauseated. Her
stomach heaved, but she clenched her teeth and held it
back.

Clifton’s forehead dripped oily sweat.
His teeth chattered and his eyes fluttered as though he couldn’t
quite manage the effort to open them. Ingrid freed one of her hands
to press the call button. Without two hands to hold him, Clifton
whipped his head up violently. Wire-taut tendons glared on his neck
like subcutaneous guitar strings. Sweat shot through the air in a
spray.

Caudill and Sunners got there almost
immediately. Caudill quickly crossed the room with gangly strides
and practically uprooted Ingrid from her chair. He steadied
Clifton’s head with gentle pressure.

Merrifield showed up a moment later,
peppered with red and huffing like a freight train. The knot in his
tie bobbed up and down with each breath.

Ingrid watched Clifton’s struggles with
a mingled expression of curiosity and naked fear. Sunners stood
uncertainly behind Caudill, his hands held out helplessly in front
of his lab smock. His outstretched arms reminded Ingrid of the
dream again and her legs turned rubbery. She wavered slightly and
Merrifield held her arm. His strong touch reassured her and the
cobwebs and detachment of sleep began to clear.

“
There now,” Caudill soothed. “He’s
coming around fine.”

Clifton had stopped thrashing and his
breathing had begun to normalize. The grunting sounds had ceased
and his color was up as his heart began beating more
rapidly.

The central line had been removed a
week earlier and Clifton’s only sustenance came from a standard IV
drip. His thrashing had loosened the tape that held it in place and
one errant flap stood up. Caudill smoothed it down and repositioned
the needle with all the loving concern of a father.

Clifton opened his eyes. For a few
seconds they refused to focus and all he could see was a blur
before they slowly adjusted.

Caudill sat by his bed, thick glasses
dull in the low light, his shining scalp like rubber over his
skull. His hand was on Clifton’s chest, heavy and comforting. Jimmy
stood behind Caudill, looking too young and innocent for this type
of work. Ingrid was there, too. Her hair was untidy and hung in her
face. Clifton thought she looked like hell. But she was smiling
pensively, giving it a good effort. He tried to smile
back.

His lips were dry and flaky. When he
stretched them upwards in a smile, they cracked and burned as the
parched tissues split. His teeth felt like slime-coated
cobblestones and his tongue was a piece of rotten wood in his
mouth.

“
Ingrid,” he whispered, in his feeble,
friendly voice.

“
Yes?”

Clifton smiled widely and a gleam of
humor sparkled through the glaze over his eyes.

“
You look like shit.”

“
I feel as bad as I look,” she
answered. She leaned over and gave him a hug. He tried to hug her
back, but was too weak. He seemed to have difficulty breathing with
Ingrid’s weight on his chest. She raised herself up.

“
You’ve been gone for a while,”
Caudill said. “Good to have you with us again.”

He patted Clifton’s chest with an
avuncular hand.

“
The accident,” Alex whispered.
“Bad?”

“
Very bad,” Caudill agreed.

“
Feels like my arm’s still there.
Phantom feelings?”

“
Better check again.”

Alex looked at Caudill skeptically.
Caudill smiled brightly and nodded his head.

Clifton painfully turned his head to
the right. His drug-addled expression changed from one of a man
expecting to go to the Swedish massage parlor and be pounded by
Olga the troll, but instead is met by Inga, the waif. His arm was
apparently whole and intact, wrapped in tape, gauze, and
plastic.

“
Wiggle your fingers,” Caudill
suggested.

Alex did. Very easily. He looked back
at Caudill.

“
How,” he asked. “I saw it. It was
just hanging by a tatter.”

“
Maybe you’d better ask
Ingrid.”

Ingrid looked timidly at Alex. The
conflicting emotions she had felt while his arm was regenerating
flashed through her mind. She didn’t know whether to be relieved
that he was alright, or sickened at her own coldness toward a man
for whom she thought she had entertained a great deal of affection.
Clifton’s trauma seemed terribly distant to her.

“
How are you feeling,” she
asked.

“
I just want to know what happened.
What happened to my arm?”

And, as the rains of an unusual winter
thunderstorm began to fall outside, Ingrid told him.

By the time Ingrid had finished, Alex
had managed to sit up. He had listened with more and more interest
as the gruesome tale spun out, acting as if he were listening to a
particularly engaging lecture on regenerative mechanics instead of
the nearly wondrous events that had given him his arm
back.

“
You say it was gone,” Clifton asked.
“Completely gone? You cut the whole thing off?”

“
That wasn’t the easiest thing to do,”
she said shakily. The telling had taken a lot out of her. “I didn’t
do it as an experiment, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She felt a
little pique was justified. It helped to salve her heretical
thinking about Alex.

“
I’m sure Alex didn’t mean to suggest
that,” Merrifield put in.

“
No,” Clifton said. There was deep
affection in his voice. He sounded on the verge of tears. The
battling emotions rose in Ingrid again like the clash of a
warrior’s sword on a shield.

“
I guess it just hasn’t sunk in yet,
having just woke up and heard the story. Everything’s still
fuzzy.”

“
It’s okay, Alex,” Ingrid said. “Alan
did most of it. You should thank him.”

Caudill blushed modestly. He didn’t
trust himself to speak for fear his mumble would return.

“
I guess you all had a hand in helping
me.” Alex looked around to include everyone. “When I get out of
here, you all get something special.”

“
I’ve already got my something
special,” Ingrid said.

Clifton beamed at her, never knowing
she was thinking of something else entirely.