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Fantasy Stories

Soul Survivor

Written by Matthew Joseph Harrington

Illustrated by Bob Greyvenstein

I

CIV

Kevin Ridler was in the habit of making his own entertainment. To this end he wore small hinges under his clothing in tactical locations. (The word "strategic" would be incorrect. This was applied direct action against a target.) As they had been lubricated in the factory, he had washed them in lanolin, then detergent, and dried and reassembled them. They squeaked, very faintly, when he moved. Nobody ever mentioned it in his hearing.

In fact, the artificial joints and cultured cartilage in the right side of his body worked a good deal more smoothly than the makeshift apparatus evolution had installed on the left. (If the thought of further surgery hadn’t given him clenched hair, he'd have had those replaced as well. They ached a lot of the time.) However, while the presence of the implants was widely known, their quality was not. People were disturbed, and developed elaborately artificial behavior in trying not to show it.

Hence the entertainment.

****

The town was named Paxburg, and everyone in it who was old enough to have belonged to a political party had been a Republican. (Prohibition had been the last really prosperous time the town had known, and there had always been an unvoiced conviction that the Democrats had ended it just to louse them up—no credit being given them for starting it in the first place, of course.) Such unanimity colored their views even now. Ridler was a veteran, and a disabled one at that; this entitled him to somewhat better treatment than visiting royalty deserved—though given some of King Andrew's antics following the Denver summit, this could be a broad range.

As may be; the Lost Division was a battle standard, and the Sole Survivor was its totem.

There were three standard questions everyone had, once he was back among civilians:

"What was it like in Katanga?"

"Does it hurt?"

"Did you kill anyone?"

Hot.

Seldom.

Probably.

In Paxburg there was, occasionally, a fourth:

"Where exactly were you hit?"

I wasn't, lady. I was sleeping under a tank when the People's Reform Movement tested their bomb on us, and it slid off one row of treads, and everything right of a line from my shoulder arch to the crook of my heel was squeezed into a gap 2 7/8 inches thick. All the scars you see are from surgery.

Go find somebody else, lady.

****

He arrived on April 28, and had four days to settle in before the city council met on Friday. During that time he bought some 5c and 10c pipe, 10c pipe caps, 10/5 joints, a maxitool, mousetraps, starter's pistols, wire, blasting putty, primers, blank cartridges, and a shell loader. On due consideration he also bought a sack of quicklime, and every gumdrop in town. His rental included a garage, and he worked with his purchases there.

The council met in the morning. There wasn't a great deal for it to do, nor income to do it with, nor inclination to find anything; there were still plenty of people around who recalled what an appalling situation they'd gotten into when government was a profession.

The big issue of the morning was a proposal to extend the law that protected stray cats to include stray dogs. It got very heated, especially after it was pointed out that cats were protected because they kill rodents and birds, and thus decrease food losses, but dogs instinctively kill anything they chase—cats, for instance. The councilors put their heads together after an hour of noise, and presently the mayor announced that Paxburg was not going to start fining people for shooting dogs on their own land, even if the dogs were enticed in some way. Dogs could be dangerous, but the worst a cat ever got was obnoxious.

One prodog campaigner reached in his handbag and got out a little spray can, and Kevin snatched up an ashtray, held it like a shuriken, and yelled "Freeze!" When the man looked at him, Kevin said quietly, "It'll punch right into your brain. You like baby food?"

The sergeant at arms relieved the man of his surprise, which was a reusable fogger charged with butyl mercaptan—oil of skunk. He was arrested and his insurer notified. (The s/a also asked Kevin if he would be interested in a training post with the town militia, but he declined for lack of time.)

When the call came for other business, he rose again and went to the lectern. "My name is Kevin Ridler," he said. "One 'd.’” (This got a mild chuckle. These people were hardly likely not to know his name.) "I'd like to buy the box valley property from the township."

The mayor looked startled. "Do we own it?"

"Paxburg's property tax assessor confiscated it in 1986," the secretary told her. "It's a white elephant. Good thing for the taxman, too, 'cause the last owner had a hell of an arsenal. Nobody claimed it during refranchisement." People were looking at him. "Hey, I've been town secretary a long time; it's a dull job, I read the records," he said.

"I've budgeted ten million for it," Kevin said, regaining the spotlight. Somebody whistled, as well they might: It came to over a kilo of real money, i.e. bred thorium, and one gram would buy twenty pounds of prime strip steak.

The council put their heads together again, then the mayor said, "Might we know who your insurer is?"

Kevin snorted. "Lloyd's. Who else?"

"Oh, of course. No problem, then. The sense of the meeting is that for reasons involving patriotism, and in my case fear of Purgatory, we should ask two million."

"Deal."

"Not yet. You do know the place needs a lot of work and is pretty well stripped?"

"I've seen it. It looks like a full plate. I like working with my hands."

"Uh—yes. Let's see, we'll need a bill of sale..."

"There's some refranchisement forms still in the blue file cabinet," the secretary supplied. "I noticed them when we were doing the water thing."

"Oh good."

There ensued some discussion of what to do with the money, and they decided to invest in the county electric plant and distribute the income as college scholarships. Somebody suggested using part for small-business loans, but another councilor replied, "They'll come back if they liked it here," and that settled that.

****

Kevin set up his camper in the driveway and his drafting table in the lobby. There were no intact windows, and the walls inside and out were heavily graffitied, mostly unoriginally. There were two exceptions: along the interior wall of one meeting hall were the words arbeit macht stadtluft, which struck him as funny all over again whenever he saw them; and on the back wall of the main lobby, just where you were facing as you walked in, was the syllable civ, alone and enigmatic. He wondered what someone had meant to write, and why they stopped.

Kevin laid out his traps and baited them, then put on the end caps. With the caps on they looked like giant empty rifle shells. Inside each was the mechanism of a starter's pistol, wired to a mousetrap spring, the trap being disarmed and baited with a gumdrop. The blank shell held a little lump of blasting putty. If the gumdrop was moved, the putty was detonated, and the reverberating shock wave inside the pipe damn near liquefied the rat or mouse that had set it off.

(Eighteen hours wedged under a tank had given him a thoroughly individual perspective on scavenging rodents. He'd given his ratkillers considerable thought—how to keep a kitten out, for instance—and had also hit upon the happy idea of making the 10c pipes different lengths, so he'd know which to reset by the tone.)

He began work by measuring rooms, a good way to work out the thickness of walls without perforating them further. The drafting table was so he could work out the gaps, of which there were sure to be some. False walls are added, closets are wallpapered over, cellars of Amontillado are bricked up. He measured three walls and two diagonals, which gave him the fourth wall and the corner angles. Door, hinge to corner, and measure the hall and record doors Saturday or Sunday.

Half the rooms in the hallway he checked that night had fireplaces, and the wall between a room with a fireplace and a room without was of poorer construction. This would date from the boarding-school period: Rooms for students had been made by cutting the quarters of the most menial servants in half. Kevin had spent three weeks in a boarding school before managing to get kicked out, and for a while he wondered why they hadn't bricked up the fireplaces. Later he saw some mortar stuck to one, and realized: They had. Some later owner had reopened the fireplaces but kept the staff in half-sized rooms. Probably the heatless ones were storage.

The walls were pretty thick: Additional layers had been added to allow the passage of electrical wiring. In most places it was still there, too hard to get at. All sockets and fixtures were gone, but there must have been miles of heavy single-strand copper.

After he got to the end of the hall, he came back to the lobby, recopied the room measurements in proper orientation, and added to his already-extensive shopping list:

CRUCIBLES, 2

ALUMINUM, 325 KG

FIRECLAY, 1 TON

SPOOL W/CRANK

DRAWING BENCH

OHMMETER—m

ANNEALING TORCH

WRAPPING SPOOL

CELLULOSE, FLAT, 5MM X 20KM

DIP ROLLERS & POT, GLASS

ACRYLIC ANHYDRIDE, 400 L

He also increased the amount noted by an earlier item, SO₃, and scratched out his note for wiring. He'd make his own milspec AlCu.

He meant to have a reasonable industrial infrastructure worked up by the time the building was fixed. That was what every previous owner had forgotten, and the only thing Marx had gotten right: All wealth is production. The Ridlers had been a clan of lawyers, and this fundamental truth had been driven home cruelly in the Triple Crash. (The only places that had ever prospered without a massive industrial base had been those like the Caymans, which offered an increase in net wealth by concealing property from those whose business was seizing it from its makers and taking small fees for the service.)

The light was going, so he switched on his hard-hat lamp and went out with a zoom camera to spot some of the cabins before sunset. There were supposed to be twenty-eight; he located four, and took quick snaps of three. With the fourth he started having trouble with focus and was forced to go up the draw and stand right there to shoot it. As long as he was there, he snapped the surroundings and interior by the miner's lamp, using up the rest of the roll in the night.

Saturday morning he developed it and found several negatives fogged. "Good Lord, thorium?" he said aloud, facetiously, and blew them up to puzzle out their locations. Some jokes are true, after all.

The first shot of the cabin had seven characters across it, like a license plate:

321t2uz

Kevin frowned. He'd seen no such thing, and it was big enough to spot, and he'd opened the roll fresh right here.

Another shot showed a darker area on one of the large rockfalls in the draw. There was nothing between his lamp and the subject to cast a shadow there.

One of the interior shots showed the dirt floor—just as level—too high. There was half a course of bricks obscured along the hearth, which were fully visible in the other shots. The floor in that shot had a dark area across most of it.

In another, there was a gap in the bricks under one end of the hearth—one that didn't exist; he'd stood on those "missing" bricks getting a shot out the door.

A fifth picture was that very shot, and it showed a dark shape across the threshold, just this side of the moonlight shadow of the eaves over the door.

The moon had not been high in the sky—in spring, in temperate climates, it is never high in the sky after sunset. Its path would have been barely above the southern horizon. It could not have made that shadow.

Kevin switched on the repeater in his camper, then took phone, pick, shovel, and provisions up to the cabin.

****

Around 3:00 p.m., he pulled up in front of the town marshal's office. He went in carrying a bundle of plastic bags.

The marshal, who was the council s/a naturally enough, said, "Afternoon, Mr. Ridler. How can I help you?"

"I was hoping to get a fingerprint run down. Damn FBI site isn't compatible with my scanner, or says it isn't. Looks like a thumb. I've got some good photos." Kevin unwrapped his parcel to reveal a vintage KA-BAR. It was rusted slightly on one face; on the other, just above the hilt, was a perfect print, in dust cemented by blood. "The first few are in situ. I've been webbed up for about two hours. In late November of 1979, Todd Whitney and Steven Ardmore shared a cabin at the Isolation Training Camp. Ardmore said Whitney went hunting and didn't return, and there was a big search. The inventory number on this matches the one Ardmore was issued; the one he turned in was Whitney's. I've found the body."

****

Sunday was a busy day, but he didn't get any work done. Kevin cleared up the question of motive while inspecting the hearth—on the far end from what the picture showed; he'd flopped the negative. (Not that anybody else got to see those pictures.) There were four brittle plastic bags behind the bricks, which had been epoxied back into place. The contents proved to be a good grade of refined cocaine. Medically, it was worth at least a hundred grams BT or so; when it was contraband, it could have bought the county.

Ardmore was arrested Monday morning at a board meeting. He had a stroke on the spot but was in good shape for a man pushing eighty. His attorney was quoted as calling the evidence "flimsy"; with any luck the sonofabitch would be acquitted and spend the next ten years in a diaper.

Monday Kevin spent getting things on his shopping list, stressing that the tarps must come first, then the prefab hangar, then the work vehicles, and only then the supplies. A forensic team spent the day unearthing the slit trench where the bloodied floor dirt from the cabin had been laboriously dumped. The draw's drainage ran right past the trench; the greenery Kevin had stood in while trying to focus on the cabin Friday had been fertilized with Whitney's blood.

After the cops had gone home for the night, he got out his photos again, held one before a mirror, sighed, and shook his head. He'd heard stories about MBAs.

He took his camera and a folding chair up to the cabin after dinner.

The trouble is, he thought, I'm so used to getting the creeps without warning that I can't tell if it's me or not. "'Justice' is spelled with a 'c,’ not a second 's,’” he said, once he was settled. He waited. There had been no telltale sounds the first time, either. "Ardmore was arrested this morning. He had a stroke when they took him in. He's paralyzed." More silence. "His lawyers may be able to confuse the jury. If so, his business can afford outstanding medical care. He may be paralyzed for a long time."

Abruptly, a cricket began to chirp. More joined in. There had been none a moment before, and none Friday.

Kevin nodded, stood, folded his chair, and took a couple of photos, and something went plink! on his hard hat.

There was a little brown-brass key on the floor; it had a splinter of wood still adhering to it, from where it had been stuck to the cabin's rafter. When Kevin picked it up, he read the number 07738. The other side, very fine, read banque de luxembourg.

Kevin looked at it a while, turning it back and forth between his fingers; then he said, very softly, "You're welcome."

****

When he went into the lobby to put the chair back at the drafting table, he had an immediate sense that something had been moved. He hit the floods.

Everything was in its customary state of high entropy. He inspected the ceiling and the hall mouths, then did a slow walk around the room. Nothing missing. Nothing added. Nothing misplaced. He came back to the doorway and stared, unseeing, at the opposite wall for a good two minutes before its content registered on his brain:

CIII

Still spray-painted on.

He went over to it. Same paint. What in the world—?

His eyes widened, he jerked forward as if struck in the belly, he looked all around him wildly for a moment; then his shoulders slumped, he clutched his head, and in a tone of incomparable dismay he said, "Oh, fuuuuck!"

It wasn't the beginning of a word.

It was a Roman numeral.

Evidently the long-term tenants kept a census.

Kevin Ridler staggered off to bed.

A few minutes later, after some false starts, the floodlights were switched off behind him.

II

FIRST, DO NO HARM

Kevin shambled out of bed when he heard the first truck, wanting to keep it from honking. He wore camouflage-colored pajamas, and it took the eye a moment to register that the blobs were teddy bears, of various sizes, at assorted angles—wearing ammo bandoliers.

The driver and assistant were sitting in the unmoving cab, gazing openmouthed at the main façade. Kevin looked at it, then faced the truck again and waved his arms.

They came to and got out of the truck. "Nice-looking girl," the driver said. "What's her name?"

"Beats me. I'm a hermit. She's either a squatter or a ghost."

The assistant spoke up. "I never hearda no ghost mooning nobody."

The ensuing silence was profound. Finally, Kevin said, "What window?"

"Third floor," the driver said, frowning as he tried to figure out what was wrong with the pajamas. "By a balcony." He visibly shook himself out of it, and said, "We got tarps and an Acme Instant Shelter. You want—"

BWOWpweeew!

"What was that?" they both screamed from where they'd hit the dirt.

As he had planned for over two years, Kevin said, "Mice."

He made his own entertainment.

****

The tarps were laid under the shelter around the pond, and the hangar shell was laid at the end of their arc, like the point on a question mark. The truckers laid the net, and Kevin fired the spikes—as a sapper he'd had a nice touch—and as the shell filled with carbon monoxide, the driver explained, earnestly and unnecessarily, "You gotta wait 'til it goes limp again before you run in the methanol-styrene mix. Otherwise, it could pop. After you do that, it'll get baggy in maybe an hour, then it's safe to put in the dimelcet—the dimo—"

"Diaminoacetylene."

"Yeah, the orange bottle—you done this before?"

"In Katanga."

The driver slapped himself on the forehead. "Ridler! I even read about you in Leading Edge. Oh Christ, I never even thought about rats. I'm sorry I just said that."

"It's ace."

"Mm, well, thanks. You ought to patent those."

Kevin shook his head. "There's already some related patents. And no manufacturing market. The most it ever kills is two—strictly an entertainment device. And it's more fun to build your own," he added seriously.

"Yeah, okay," the driver mused. They watched the bulge grow to its full size, fifteen by forty meters; then the driver said, "Whatcha puttin' in there?"

"Bulldozer, cherry picker, dynamo, couple of trucks, backhoe, cement mixer, fuel converter, bunch of assorted whatnot."

"Whatcha makin' this place?"

"A city."

"No shit. All on your own?"

"Until I've got housing for people, yeah."

****

After he gave the receipt and watched them go, Kevin labored up the steps to what had been the master's suite, headmaster's quarters, penthouse, and so on, and there announced: "Hello! Please do not roast the driver's brain until the vehicle has come to a complete stop! Large holes in the building will reduce the time I can devote to everybody's problem!"

The air, a little dusty, became still and clear. Something brushed his head and shoulders, and touched him faintly; he felt a touch on the left side of his jawline. He looked down and tried to focus short, and there was a region of distortion, as if the air were denser—

The dust stirred up again. There was nothing in front of him. "Thanks," he said quietly, and started thinking about what had just happened.

Another truck hove into distant view. "That'll be the generator." He sighed and headed back to the stairs. (Down was in fact harder than up.)

****

Deliveries continued all week, allowing him little time for reflection. He measured and recorded every room on every level and found scores of dead spaces. So to speak.

He peeled the walls with spall charges to get the wiring out—the lath and plaster were like armor; no wonder nobody'd ever tried it by hand!—and found lots of closures. He opened these, and now and then found bodies, or rather skeletons.

He opened everything, including a luggage room (with no bodies in it), before calling for assistance. There were eleven bodies. Eight were children's. One (adult) was in an enormous cellar he hadn't even known was there until he exposed the stairway. (It held an immense number of wine bottles; the latest date he saw was 1864.)

By then he had the records of the place and was scanning them page by page into a data file. The arrivals of priest, rabbi, ministers, and coroner (who had had to come together in a rented truck) didn't disturb this a lot.

The news eaters did. They rolled into the valley like oranges, having apparently learned nothing back in '19.

Kevin refreshed their memories.

****

The first six gas grenades went up the draw to the cabin. They were canisters of EP gas, a "humane" weapon the UN had used in Katanga before America had begun cleaning up their usual mess. EP stood for Extreme Peristalsis. (In the Army they'd been known as rocket igniters. Everything from the back of your throat on down ended up in your pants, quite soon.)

Kevin limped more than he had to coming out the door, gas mask in left hand, belt launcher in right, and said, "Tomonaga, Sarasvati, et alia, versus CBS, 2019. You make recordings that are usable as evidence in court. Let's see your search warrants." After a moment of silence, he said, "You are here on a criminal enterprise. Every tape, disk, and crystal in your possession goes in a big pile, and then you check each other. One holdout, and everybody hoses the ground for a week." (EP gas actually didn't work for more than half a minute or so, followed by a period of tolerance for a few hours; Kevin didn't think they really had to know that, though.) There was one camera with a red light. Kevin perched the gas mask on his head, drew the long-barreled .223 from the back of his belt, and said in a declamatory voice: "'The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . .'" Then he put a round through the lens, bursting the camera—the pistol being one he'd taken off a death-squad cop in Katanga, and which fired rifle bullets. "Your right to poke your nose around ends at my fist," he reminded them over the sudden bustle of compliance.

Everybody frisked everybody else. (Interestingly, some of them had clearly had some experience at it.) One man who bolted for his truck and tried to start it was caught and severely beaten by several others, who were evidently less worried about lawsuits than about their dignity, their clothes, or both. When the horrified and humiliated crews from the draw showed up, bodies and clothes wet from cleaning up in the stream, their recordings joined the rest.

Kevin told the latecomers, "It's my guess you wet people aren't stupid anymore. The rest of you, strip and back off. Your clothes are going to be searched."

Compliance with this was slower and more sullen, but complete. A couple of crystals got tossed anonymously onto the pile. Kevin noticed one TV hotshot crying, but had no sympathy after the coverage he'd seen on Katanga—in point of fact, he had to strain to resist the temptation to haul her in front of the rest, and demand, "How do you feel?" (This, he judged, was the difference between mercilessness and cruelty.)

The wet people, who were also terribly hungry, searched the clothes and parcels very briskly.

"When you hear your name called, come take your clothes." He went through wallets, calling out one at a time. One woman had four assorted emerald cards, all labeled demassi industries, and when Gennifer Queen showed up, Kevin said quietly, "Weekly Galaxy?"

She flinched, and nodded, looking scared.

"Drag your feet leaving and tell your people to hang around. You can have an interview."

She stared, astonished, but nodded again and retreated with her clothes.

Supermarket-tabloid coverage might be just what was needed to get the rest of the media to leave him alone.

****

Of course the vehicle left behind was the unmarked panel truck. When the rest had left, Kevin said, "Go on into the lobby and pull up some debrís. I've got to take care of these."

"Need a light?" asked an incredibly muscular man.

"No, I'm going to look them over and send them back," Kevin told him. "Suitably erased."

"We'll tie 'em up in my jacket," the big guy said. His name was Horace Delp. "Could be some good stuff in there. You got a second maxicorder?"

"I've got four. One of my recreations is editing commercials."

"Why?"

"I'll show you some."

****

Gennifer Queen was the nominal reporter. Horace Delp was the graverobber—their remarkably frank term for a background researcher. Alice Byerly did diversions, and Robin Bloom was the photographer. All four laughed, more than was necessary to be merely polite, at his highly irregular productions.

Example:

Grave woman with ultraconservative ram's-horn hairdo: "Another presidential election is coming up, and voters all have one question for Don Yates."

Animated giant with armor and spiked helmet: "WHERE IS THE MADNESS WITH WHICH YOU SHOULD BE CLEANSED?"

Man dressed in a pig suit: "Come on down to Hamm's Toyota and see for yourself!"

President Yates, with his jes'-folks smile: "That's all I ask."

Kevin had a dozen of these things completed and had interleaved them through the pilot episode of Star Trek: Secession. They did something for the plot.

After everyone got back from using the bathroom in Kevin's camper, Kevin said, "The Galaxy is my favorite paper."

"Why?" Robin said, in honest puzzlement.

Kevin smiled at him, and said, "I was in the Army in Katanga. All journalism is bullshit in a colorful package, and its purpose is to sell beer. You just don't make no bones about it. And it's a fun paper. I had a torturer who—sorry, that's what we called the physical therapists at the VA—she used to read to me out of the Galaxy. No matter how pissed I was, she always got a laugh.

"Okay, here's how I propose we do this: First, I tell you what's going on; then we cook up a story you like; then I tell you that story. You can pose me for reaction shots, too, if it'll help.

"Now. The place is haunted. Thickly. I was led to the first body by a ghost ..."

****

He finished leading them around the place a couple of hours later. "They said she was in that window," he pointed out. Robin took a picture. "I went up and asked her not to make trucks crash into the house, and this was apparently agreeable. You want to use my darkroom?"

"Got one in the truck. Fuji Lightning. Want a look?"

"Used to have one. It squeaked."

"You gotta keep the hypo out of the bearings," Robin said helpfully.

"It squeaked new. I have a thing about things that squeak."

The four discussed a possible story while Robin developed his photos. They'd worked out a pretty good one (about a secret society of unregenerate slave owners who still kept slaves and killed anyone who found out) by the time Robin came back in. He had the most peculiar expression—rather as if he'd bitten into a peach, and it tasted like steak. "Have a look at this," he said, and handed over an enlargement.

It was of the window—good lens, Kevin thought—and showed a woman bundled up like a Moslem's property. Only her eyes were visible. Kevin laughed. "Quite a sense of humor."

"How was it done?" Robin cried. "There was nothing there!"

"Beats the freckles off me. Maybe it was an image aimed only at the lens."

"How?"

"I don't know. Maybe they tell you this stuff when you die."

"They who?"

"You know, they. The ones who know everything and tell only each other. Dead Men In Black, or something."

****

Much later, near sunset, Alice asked him, "How could you afford all this?"

Everybody stared at her. "I was the last survivor of the Eighth Division, in Katanga," Kevin said.

"Is that in Africa?"

Kevin nodded slowly, then said, "What, exactly, is your function, in connection with this news outlet?"

In a single, swift, two-handed motion, Alice tore her shirt clean off and tossed it at him, and when he caught it she screamed like a chain saw hitting a nail.

Then she got a new shirt out of her bag and put it on. "Diversions," she said. "You were saying how you got rich."

Kevin was still blinking rapidly, but he said, "Ever hear of GI insurance?"

"No."

"Used to be when you joined the armed forces, you were automatically insured, for a lump sum to be paid to whoever you designated if you died in the service. We—"

****

"Why?" she said, baffled.

"It got started around World War II. Back then it was ten thousand dollars—real money, enough to live on for like four years. It had gone up, but it came to about a week's pay when I was in, and one guy got the idea of naming every surviving member of the division as his beneficiaries, so everybody would get this tiny pile of change each. The cost of doing the fund transfer to add it to our paychecks came to more than that. He was the kind of guy whose idea of how to complain about inadequate safety standards was to set the building on fire. He figured to drive the Veterans' Administration nuts—they were in charge of the insurance, and they'd get fed up and do something, like maybe provide a sensible policy amount. So he did that, and he told his buddies, and it caught on, and we all did it, and the Eighth got nuked in Katanga while I was sacked out under a tank, and when I got out of the hospital I was handed a check for twelve thousand insurance benefits, less one. Next question?"

Gennifer said, "Are you married?" and got a laugh in which Kevin did not participate. The laugh died out.

Kevin said, softly, gently, "I had a sixty-one-ton tank not quite sitting on me for just over eighteen hours. It took the medics that long to get enough chelating enzyme sent from North Carolina to keep the potassium from the ruptured cells from roasting my heart. During that time my blood was forced into the uncompressed parts of my body. I was awake and hyperalert the whole time. Most of the repair work done on me was embryonic tissue grafts, everywhere. I had a huge erection throughout the experience. I haven't had one since. The pressure damage is fixed, I just go into a panic attack whenever I start to get one. Conditioned response."

After a little while, Robin said, "The mice. Eating."

"Oh yes. It made a perceptible noise."

"Oh Jesus," said Alice, who managed to get outside before she threw up.

"I think," Horace said, "if that got out, every hot-twat gold digger in the world would be here, trying to 'cure' you, in about a week."

"No," Kevin said. "The corpses of the first thousand would block the road." His voice was like an early hint of winter.

****

On the way out of the lobby, Gennifer pointed, squeaked, and staggered. Kevin propped her up and looked.

XCV

"Eight," Kevin said thoughtfully. "At a guess, the boys from the boarding school days liked the slave-owner story. Must have spoken to their condition."

"They're real," said Gennifer, in a voice approaching ultrasonics.

"I know," Kevin said.

"Aren't you at all scared?"

"There's never been an authenticated case of a ghost harming anybody," Kevin said.

"They said that in The Haunting of Hill House," Alice said darkly.

"Well, the ghost didn't hurt anybody," Kevin pointed out. "I don't see how they can."

"Maybe when it happens no witnesses get out," Alice persisted.

"Maybe you should invest in a crucifix.” Horace grinned.

"That's vampires," Robin objected.

"Can't hurt," said Horace.

"That's chicken soup," said Kevin.

****

From the seized material he erased only those things that included the valley or Paxburg. Crystals he replaced with blanks, in a couple of cases copying onto those the unrelated matters on the originals. It was tedious, but they were indelible. He noticed some other things that looked as if they might be interesting, but they'd have to wait.

Kevin set up blacklights in the cellar to kill the mildew. These weren't mercury lamps, but tuned-crystal emitters, radiating at two hundred nanometers. The light came out polarized, vertically.

Some of the mildew fluoresced.

So did the ghost.

He'd starved to death. That was what the coroner had said, but Kevin had not, he found, fully grasped it. He did now.

There was a vague suggestion of a suit, but it hung like a bag over bones. He looked like he'd just gotten out of Auschwitz or a Schick center or something.

Don't shoot.

"Okay."

I'll come peacefully.

"I'm not a cop. Why were you down here?"

Conscription. I've family in Arkansas.

"Oh. Well, for what comfort it gives you, the Supreme Court ruled conscription unconstitutional."

Oh, God, I'm free! Have you got anything to eat?

He had some jerky in a shirt pocket. "I don't know if this'll do any good, but here." He held it out. "I'm Kevin."

Jerome. His hand passed through the jerky. What is this stuff?

"Beef jerky. I was afraid of this. Jerome, you're dead."

I can't be. I'm hungry.

"You starved to death. At least 172 years ago."

LIAR! Jerome grabbed his left arm.

It went dead. Instantly. Kevin's heart began racing, and his knees went weak. "Jerome, let go," he gasped.

You liar, a dead man can't hold your arm, you're tormenting me because I won't go die for some niggers—Jerome was firming up considerably in both opacity and bulk, and his "voice" was developing some Ivy League overtones.

It occurred to Kevin that he could touch what could touch him—but it would have to be very sudden; and did ghosts have bones and pressure points?

He drove his right index finger into Jerome's left eye, up to the knuckle.

He would never be able to describe, or even clearly recall, that scream.

He would never entirely stop recalling the thunderbolt that followed it. It kicked him off his feet, driving him clean through the wine rack to his left and into the next one. Fortunately, the bottles were empty, so he merely got scratched and cut instead of hammered to a pulp.

Sensation returned to his left arm and was not made to feel welcome. It felt like he'd soaked it in ice water for a really idiotically long time. The pain ran right down into the bone and started doing laps.

There was a stunned feeling along his right side. The shock had traveled up his finger, hand, arm, and shoulder, down his ribs, through the substrate mesh, into his hip, and straight down his leg into the floor. He could tell, because he could feel all those several and combined parts quivering at once.

He suddenly recalled the situation, and sat up. There was no sign of Jerome.

Kevin forced himself to his feet, left arm hanging limp. His right bootheel fell off. He'd pissed himself. He turned toward the stairs, aware of a sharp tang of ozone with a dash of scorched hair.

There was a broad, cloudy mass before the stairs. A figure detached itself from it, came up to about twenty feet, and stopped.

Kevin had also stopped, and his hands began to throb, each in its own distinct way.

The figure focused itself from a pale blob into something vaguely feminine. I hid him. He killed me. Then he starved. Then he killed them. He kept us here. We had to help him. Now we can go. Thank you. And she curtsied.

Kevin managed to sketch out something like a bow. "Glad to do it. Good luck."

And to you, sir. She dispersed and faded, like fog in the sun. The rest were gone when she was.

Kevin hobbled upstairs and through the lobby, where the mark now read lxxviii (so: Jerome had killed sixteen people—at least sixteen, enslaving that many), and went into his camper.

He peeled his boot off—the laces crumbled—and after inspecting his foot decided he wouldn't lose the toenails. He finished undressing, stumbled into the bathroom, and leaped back out before he realized it was his reflection that had startled him.

He was sunburnt; his eyes were now baby blue; and his hair had gone white as chalk.

Eyebrows, lashes, body hair, everything.

Every mole he had was charred black.

****

Kevin stayed out of the sun for about three weeks, by which time his skin had its pigment back. His follicles didn't, however; nor did his irises, and his eyes became even more sensitive than they'd been after the retinal grafts.

He spent the time wearing shades and making wire: 65 kilos aluminum per 153 kilos copper, melt, blend, extrude, and draw. No pickling or blasting required: a thin layer of oxide crumbled off as it drew, leaving copper atoms exposed, suitable for soldering. And you could practically anneal it with a match.

New insulation he made from cellulose, acrylic anhydride, and sulfuric acid. The hot-wire he ran through black latex paint before the polymerizer dip.

Then he went in to tear down the paneling, which had been under the wiring and lath, which had been under the latest internal façade. He started in the master suite, on the hypothesis that any crud he dropped or tracked around would only have to be cleaned once that way.

On the third wall he hit he found a remarkable collection of extremely explicit photographs. The woman in each was the same one; the man (or sometimes men) varied. Curious, he peeled the rest of the wall very carefully.

There were 306, in a layout nine high by thirty-four long, interrupted by a hallway. They covered most of the wall. They were yellowed, but not cracked or wrinkled, and they were stuck to that wall. Somebody had known the condensed-milk trick.

In none was the woman completely nude. Sometimes it was only stockings, heels, handcuffs, and blindfold, but she always wore something. She was blond, pretty, and stacked like gold bricks, and in a Cleopatra costume she looked a little like Jean Harlow.

The photos had all been taken in this room, about—He frowned. About from where the opposite wall was. Facing the other way? No, there was the window. Hmm.

Damned if there wasn't a walk-in closet on the other side of that section. That called for a chat.

It was June 21; he had plenty of daylight left to bring up a chair, a coffeepot, an ashtray, and a blacklamp before nightfall. He poured two cups, plugged in the lamp, lit a smoke, and switched it on.

She'd had plenty of time to prepare, and he knew she liked surprises—so he was surprised differently. She wore a long robe, down to the floor.

She smiled, raised a hand, and waggled her fingers. She looked adorable.

"Those are all you?" he said, thumb over his shoulder.

She beamed and took a bow.

"Prohibition?"

She tapped her nose.

"Don't you talk?"

She looked sad and put her hands over her ears.

"Deaf. Are you still deaf?" he exclaimed.

She shook her head, then waggled her fingers by her ear.

"The words don't make sense?"

She tapped her nose again.

"But you read lips."

Another tap.

Uneasily, he said, "How come you're not all foggy, like the others?"

She grinned. Then she held up a hand as if to stop traffic, pointed at Kevin sharply, and pointed toward her eyes a couple of times.

"I'm paying attention," he assured her.

She gave a pleased nod, then held up one finger; then she stuck her elbow out to the side and walked as if escorting a beau. Then she looked around furtively, hunched down a little, and began exaggeratedly tiptoeing along—still with her elbow out. Then she straightened up and made a show of looking around interestedly, and went over to a wall and ran her hand along it.

Then she held up two fingers; then she held her hands out as if clutching something to her, and pumped her hips. Then she puckered up and pushed one finger into her mouth a few times. Then she began to hike up the back of her robe—

"I get the picture. A couple snuck in here to screw extensively. How does that help you?"

She did the stop-traffic gesture again. Then she stepped backward, through her robe, leaving it standing where she'd been and retaining its shape. As Kevin stared, she laid the robe on the floor—still in shape—parted the front below the sash, and moved the sleeves up to the position of arms holding someone. Then she held up three fingers, moved off a little ways, and came strolling up, then acted as if she'd just noticed the robe. She smiled and rubbed her hands together, then got all foggy. The fog drifted into the open bottom of the robe, and some came out the neck and sleeves—and suddenly she was in focus, legs high, ankles crossed, head thrown back, mouth open.

She straightened her robe, got up, and took another bow.

Kevin stuck his cigarette in his mouth and applauded. Then he said, "They must have had some session."

She gave him a knowing look. Then she held up four fingers. Then she held a hand to her jaw as if holding a phone, and moved her mouth very rapidly, pausing to roll her eyes up and pump her hips vigorously; then she moved her mouth some more. Then she held up the other hand and dropped the first, again holding a phone, but this time with big round eyes and a little round mouth. Then she hung up the imaginary phone, grabbed something to one side, took it in the crook of her elbow, and marched off as if dragging someone that way. Then she made more mouth motions, and phone gestures with alternating hands.

"Lots of couples, by the grapevine," Kevin said, and got another nose tap. "It doesn't hurt them?"

She shook her head rapidly, then clutched an imaginary partner and bucked her hips violently a few times. Then she straightened up, held up a hand, and ticked off fingers.

Kevin had to puzzle over this a moment. Then he guessed, "Multiple orgasms?"

She nodded several times, eyes big and bright.

"They don't get cold?"

She held up thumb and forefinger a little way apart. Then she clutched her hips and jiggled her hands. Then she held up her palms facing each other a couple of feet apart and moved them slowly together, just a few inches closer. Then she made a circle of thumb and forefinger, and nodded.

"They lose weight, and it's all right with them."

She looked pleased and pointed at him, once, tapping her nose once more.

"You must have been incredible at charades. I'm Kevin," he said.

She nodded, held a hand above her eyes, and pointed at him.

"Oh, been watching me."

She nodded again, then held up a hand. She removed the robe, then stood on tiptoe, held her hands up as if chinning herself on a wall, tilted her head up, and smooched the air. Then she redonned the robe, pointed at him, and blew him a kiss.

"I remember," he said, smiling. "I like you, too. What's your name?"

She made a face and shook her head.

"Don't like it? What should I call you?"

She held her hands before her collarbone, close together, fingers down; then she raised her lip to expose her front teeth and wiggled her nose a few times.

"I can't possibly call a grown woman 'Bunny,’” he said.

She looked surprised, then made a handing-over gesture at him.

"I pick one? Uh—Jean?"

She had dimples.

"You know, you make me think of a djinni." She looked blank. "A djinni from a bottle?" he amplified.

She looked offended and opened her robe, reexposing her crotch.

"No, no." He laughed. "Like the Arabian Nights. You know, three wishes, kind of thing?" She was clearly unenlightened, and he said, "I'll be dipped. I'll bring 'em up. Can you turn pages?"

She looked astonished for a moment, then nodded quickly and hopped up and down, excited.

"Good God, you're aching for humor of course. I'll go get them now." He started to get up, then sagged. "Jeez, I'm tired!"

Djinni looked alarmed and backed well off, pointing at herself.

"Oh, boy. Ghosts drain more than heat?"

She nodded.

"Oh, boy. Hm. We have to figure something out, then." She was pointing vigorously at the blacklamp. "What, that makes it worse?"

She tapped her nose.

"Oh, boy. Maybe something to do with seeing you better. I'll study on it. Off now? Okay." He switched it off and presently stood.

When he came back up with the first volume, he stopped. He could see a faint blob of something like fog at one end of the pictures. "Djinni, is that you?" he said, and pointed. The blob shifted. He blinked a few times, then shut his eyes. Okay, he wasn't seeing it. "I can tell where you are," he said, quietly amazed.

****

He spent the next day in town, getting shorn and fed and newly clothed and stared at. He was starting past the marshal's office just as Ed Ingalls came out, and Ed flinched noticeably, and said, "How many this time?"

Kevin stared, then broke up. "I'm getting some candy," he said, pointing at the See's next door.

"Oh God." Ed sighed in relief.

"You're lucky I didn't say 'Forty or fifty.'" Kevin laughed. "I'm getting a big box."

"Oh God," Ed repeated, laughing nervously. "What happened to your hair?"

"Ozone," Kevin said, as he had to a few other people. "I've got UV lamps all over to get rid of mildew. Or no, actually I've been watching the news too much."

Ed nodded. "They said some nasty stuff about you."

"I was kidding," Kevin said. "I haven't even had time to watch the Democrat Underground."

"They're off the air," Ed said. "Caught."

"Aw, shit. They were funny, too."

"Political parties, funny?" Ed said, shocked.

"I don't mean on purpose."

Ed lifted his head sharply once, now enlightened, then looked past Kevin and stopped smiling. "New nut in town," he grumbled.

Kevin looked around. "Oh, Christ, it's my shrink from the VA," he said, rolling his eyes.

"I knew he was some kind of loony. He can't answer a question."

"No shit. Watch this."

"Hello, Kevin," the man said at two meters.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Caligari. Ed, meet the man who spent thirteen months trying to certify a cripple incompetent so he could halt further surgery and look after my money for me. Doctor Moreau, meet a man sworn to protect the public from human parasites."

"Actually, my name's Stephen Mundy, Ed," the psychiatrist said, holding out a hand.

Ed looked at the hand like he thought it might be what he'd just smelled, and hung his thumbs on his gun belt. "You always call people by their first names?" he said.

"Is that too personal?" Mundy said.

"Don't buy into it, Ed, it's a dominance game," Kevin warned.

"Little touch of the old paranoia there, Kevin?" Mundy said. He hadn't stopped smiling since he came into view.

Kevin nodded seriously. "I hear you. I hear you saying you're concerned about paranoia. We can discuss that if you want."

Mundy chuckled—exactly eight beats, never more or less—and said, "Still projecting, eh?"

"Is that what you feel I'm doing?"

"Weren't we talking about you?"

"Is it someone else choosing the subject that makes you feel threatened, or the subject chosen?"

"Is this an appropriate topic?"

"Would you feel more secure with another?"

"Don't you think you should let go of your resentment?"

"How do you feel about that?"

"Why do you feel the need to evade my questions?" Mundy said, still smiling tolerantly.

"I see my question has made you uncomfortable. Would you rather not deal with it now?" Kevin was doing sincerity.

Mundy looked at the marshal, shaking his head. "Kevin here is under the impression that I'm trying to work my will on him, so he plays these little games of one-upmanship."

"The only difference I see in how you're acting is he's better at it than you," Ed retorted.

The smile slipped for a moment. Kevin took the opportunity to say, "Stevie's problem here is that he keeps repressing his true sexual identity, which is that of a celibate. Come on, Ed, I'll buy you some walnut clusters. So long, Dr. No." As they turned away, the remark sank in, and Ed burst out laughing.

In the store, Ed said, "How'd you know I like walnut clusters?"

"I dono. Where do you pick stuff up from?"

Kevin had him there. "Damfino. Hey, is that place really haunted?"

"Yeah, but about a quarter of the ghosts have cleared out already. They've discovered they can get my attention—I guess most people are immune, or something—and they've all got some pressing problem to resolve. 'S'how I found the first body—I've been expecting a subpoena for some time now, by the way; what's up?"

"Ardmore's still in the hospital, and his lawyers are trying to thrash up the evidence. Having a tough time," Ed remarked. "You can't really fake a print in blood that's been combining with the metal under it for fifty-seven years. A little more sophisticated than a photo or a footprint, you know?"

Kevin nodded. "Well, that explains what Dr. Knox is in town for."

"That one I don't get."

"Oo, and you a cop, for shame. Heard of Burke and Hare?"

"Oh, yeah, grave robbers who decided to eliminate the middleman."

"Well, Knox was the guy they sold their nice fresh corpses to. You know, I don't think the silly ass has ever realized what all these references have in common."

"Come on, doctors who thought they were higher life-forms, too obvious."

"To put yourself in someone else's shoes you have to admit your feet touch the ground. He doesn't have enough empathy to be a sadist, Ed. I really don't think he does get it."

"What the hell is the matter with him, anyway?"

"Money," Kevin replied. "I checked some public records. There used to be a protectionist organization called the American Medical Association—"

"The Dental Association isn't protectionist," Ed protested.

"No resemblance. They kept prices up, and wouldn't let anyone buy drugs without permission—I don't mean just morphine, I mean like penicillin. I swear I'm not making this up. They also did anything necessary to keep one of their members out of jail if he hurt or killed somebody. Dr. Szell out there finished spending a staggering sum on courses at one of their approved schools about a month before this outfit was destroyed by antitrust actions, and the bottom dropped out of the market. He's been festering ever since.

"Right now I'd say he's here to concoct evidence to discredit me as a witness. Ardmore's lawyers don't realize—or don't care—that leaving the man alive and paralyzed is way harsher than nitrogen suffocation.

"And what Dr. Lysenko doesn't realize is that no amount of money will ever be enough." Kevin smiled.

"Money can't buy happiness." Ed nodded.

"Sure it can, for most people," Kevin contradicted him. "You have to know where to shop, is all. There's probably five billion people on the planet who could be made deliriously happy for life with stuff you can get at Neiman Marcus. Wouldn't hurt their feelings any at Neiman-Marcus, either," he reflected. "The thing is, to Dr. Skinner out there, money is happiness. And it won't work; he's not starving, you see, so what he needs is something that fulfills whatever talents he presumably has; and he's too stupid to figure it out."

****

Stephen Mundy, MD, Ph.D., USAMC (ret.), sat in his van and listened to what the laser reflector was picking off the chrome in the candy shop, and thought, Look who's calling whom stupid.

Ghosts, eh?

****

At dawn's first glimmer on Sunday morning the vans started showing up again, in a column like a segment of the invasion of South Vietnam. They were occupied by people much smarter and very much ruder than newsmen: every investigator from Rhine College at Duke University. They were also better prepared than the newsmen had been: They had a search warrant on public-welfare grounds, issued by a judge who had a covert partisan history to hide and who was regretting the choice already.

Unfortunately, Kevin Ridler was better prepared as well.

Someone from the first van opened a gate whose sign read:

DANGER

KEEP CLOSED

The lead van passed through, by a sign which read:

PRIVATE ROAD

DO NOT ENTER

The convoy rolled on—the gate still open behind them—until the lead van passed a sign saying:

PEST CONTROL

PROVING GROUNDS

—and in so doing crossed a laser beam that had been switched on by the opening of the gate.

This activated the minefield.

Something over an hour later, showered, shaved, fed, armed, and armored, Kevin ambled up to see what all the horn blowing was about.

He stopped about forty meters short of the lead van, looking things over. Then he slung his rifle, got out his phone, and made a call. After a short wait, he said, "I'm sorry about the time, Ed, but I need you to tell Trudy she's rich. I got about a hundred vans here with fried ignitions and no tires." (Ed's sister-in-law, Trudy Wallace, had an articulated carrier truck with a crane.) "They probably have some paper this time. Could you have it checked for authenticity? Carefully . . . ? Oh, no, neither of you should start the day hungry. There's no hurry. They'll be here whenever you happen to find it convenient to show up. Have her call me, same as you, and I'll shut off the mousetrap. . . . As far as you know,