The Wave Page 11

  “No,” Krista said. “I can’t go. I’m too old to be on the run. And you should stick it out. Why put your life on the line when they may come up with the toxin any day? Scientists around the world are working on it now. Once they come up with the right cocktail, the reason for secrecy will be over.”

  “Do you think it’s right to exterminate the XTs?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “David says it’s like any other disease, that it needs to be stopped before it infects the whole world.”

  “But how can that be?” I asked my secret lover. “The way they see it, the whole being multiplies less than a fraction of a fraction of a percent in a year. There couldn’t be much of an invasion if the disease doesn’t reproduce.”

  “Maybe there’s already enough in the ground to overtake us,” Krista said, parroting her husband. “Like oil or natural gas.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I’d sure like to get away from here.”

  “Stay awhile longer,” she said, kissing me tenderly.

  At some point in the middle of the night, I came to the realization that Krista had no more intention of letting me go than did her husband.

  That was when I decided to try and escape without her help.

  I had already made a tentative plan. I’d make it out by hiding in the SUV on one of the outings that Thalia or Krista took. I didn’t know if there were sentries that searched them on the way out. But I reasoned that guards at the gate would arouse suspicion among the neighbors.

  The other problem was surveillance. I had no idea if there were cameras set up at the various access points of the house. They could have cameras anywhere.

  One night I decided I had to try to escape. Even if I failed, I would at least know what kind of system they were using. I couldn’t just stay in my room waiting for Wheeler to decide on my fate.

  The next day, I found a large blanket in a hall closet and carried it to my room. Just as I was closing my door, I saw Thalia watching from down the hall.

  I tried to think of something to say, but there was nothing. Thalia and I never spoke. I had tried to talk to her those first few days, figuring that the old-time bond between blacks that had grown up through the racism of America would put us on the same side in the struggle against white Wheeler. But she never shared a personal moment with me. All she ever uttered was yes and no or Dr. Wheeler said . . .

  I was going to use the blanket to hide under. Maybe nobody would look. Maybe if they did look, the blanket wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

  I knew Krista planned to go shopping the next day, because she had said so at lunch. I was ready to go. The government couldn’t come after me with all their force, because the XT project was still top-secret. I’d go south and then east. I’d change my name and wait for a sign that the government was through with their machinations.

  It wasn’t much of a plan.

  It didn’t really make sense.

  Why run if I was in a nice home with food and a television set, a bed to sleep in, and sex three times a week? Where would I end up? Why go?

  By three in the morning, I had decided against escape. Krista was right. I’d stay.

  Not long after that, the door came open. I switched on the lamp. David was home that evening, so I was surprised to see Krista.

  “Turn it off,” she said.

  She sat on the bed, but there was no leaning over me in heat as she usually did. She was quiet and still.

  “Errol.”

  “What?”

  “Dr. Gregory has been running tests on your blood ever since you left XT-1,” she said in a rush. “He’s found an abnormality and has gotten permission from higher up to have you brought in for more tests. David says that you’re to be taken away day after tomorrow.”

  “For how long?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “How long, Krista?”

  “He said that you very well may not be coming back.”

  My tongue went completely dry. I started coughing. I reached for the water pitcher next to my bed and drank straight from it without bothering about the glass. But no matter how much I drank, the thirst could not be quenched.

  Krista sat in the gloom of the dark room like Wheeler’s angel come to proclaim my death.

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “They may reclassify you as an XT,” she said.

  “No.”

  “You have to escape,” my lover said with conviction.

  I told her my plan, and she said that it might work. Tomorrow it was just her and Jerome the guard going off together. She said that I should wait after breakfast and then go down to the garage and climb in the back and get under my blanket.

  “Don’t make a sound,” she said. “And remember that I love you. And that I’m sorry. I’m very sorry about having to put you through this.”

  I thought at the time that she meant the threat of annihilation at the hands of her husband’s masters.

  25

  Breakfast was as always. Wheeler engaged me in subtle interrogation while Thalia served and Krista interrupted now and then to talk about her house duties and the progress of her gardens.

  “Have you checked on the plant life around the graveyards?” I asked Wheeler at one point.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “The trees. Don’t you think the XTs might want to inhabit the trees? I mean, they did that dog.”

  “Is this anything that your GT suggested?”

  “No. No. He never talked about plants. I just thought that might be something you would have checked.”

  “That’s helpful, Errol. I’m pleasantly surprised.”

  “I’d like to be of help,” I said. “I mean, if these cells are as dangerous as you say, we’ll all have to fight them.”

  Wheeler stared at me, his dense green eyes reflecting the diffuse light of the orchard.

  “Dr. Gregory thinks our talks have been fruitless. He says that he’s not interested in the psychology of the XT but in their instinctual drive. He tells me that I’m wasting valuable research time on you.”

  “No, sir,” I said, thinking that I’d gone too far with sir.

  “Well,” Wheeler said, “tomorrow you and I will take a drive down to XT-1 and speak to Gregory personally about your newfound patriotism.”

  The garage was attached, and the door connecting it to the house was unguarded and unlocked. Krista had given me the extra remote to unlock the car doors. The side lights flashed, and the beep of the horn sounded to me like a sonic boom, but no one came. I burrowed under the gray-blue blanket and waited for my chance at freedom.

  I told Wheeler that I’d sat up all night worrying about my lack of enthusiasm in our talks. I was eager to help, but I should probably get some sleep. I begged off on our late-morning meeting, knowing that if I hesitated, Dr. Gregory would have me on an autopsy table before the week was out.

  I don’t know that I fell asleep there waiting for Krista and Jerome, but I did have a vision that I thought was a dream.

  There was a place far away and in darkness but not in the earth. It was cold and unfriendly, silent except for the weak reminiscence of gravity and light. There was a song, or maybe just a note or two, playing in the distance. It was a language used by beings now dead and gone. But the words they spoke were their salvation. They had become their language and were now looking for someone to hear them and speak their name. Their voices traveled the universe waiting for a receiver, for the chance to breathe again.

  Another voice drowned out this sibilant whisper. It was the deep and robust song of a far-traveler passing nearby. It was the radiant opera of an infinite, intangible entity that had occurred only once, in absolute perfection; a unitude of perfectly balanced ideas that was now seeking to breathe its life into another.

  Then there was a long sermon on the perpetuity of vibrations and sunlight in an endless field of quartz. This oration had something to do with the changing of Law depending upon placement
in the physical universe. There was a high moral stance to the lecture and there were many dissenting views, but I didn’t really understand much of it. I didn’t know where I was or who was speaking. I didn’t know which sense organs perceived these communiqués or what language was being spoken. But it was all one tongue, I was sure of that.

  One tongue in an endlessly varied cosmic patois.

  The doors of the car opened and slammed shut.

  “How long will we be gone?” the guard Jerome asked.

  “As long as it takes,” Krista replied.

  The words were rude, but her tone was friendly enough.

  The ignition turned over. I heard the echo of that universal language in the lurching engine. The garage door was engaged. The car started moving. My heart was beating so hard that I held my breath to slow it down.

  While they drove, Krista and Jerome talked. She was in the backseat, nearer me, but I couldn’t make out what either of them was saying. After maybe twenty minutes, we still seemed to be on dirt roads, which was odd, because, as I remembered it, the paved highway was only about ten minutes from Wheeler’s door.

  The car came to a stop, and one of the doors opened. When I heard Jerome’s army boots crunching gravel, I knew I had been found out somehow. Maybe Krista had betrayed me. Why? I felt around for something to defend myself with.

  The back door opened.

  “Not today, Jerry,” Krista said.

  A zipper sounded.

  There was a grunt and then a moan.

  “I need it, baby,” he said.

  There was about five minutes of kissing and whispers. Krista stopped telling him no.

  The SUV started rocking, and they talked to each other. Krista groaned in pleasures that I hadn’t known it was possible for her to achieve. I realized that I was only one of her lovers, only a part of her despair over Wheeler and his remote war.

  At one point Krista was screaming. Jerome was urging her on in a voice much lower than he usually used. We were all swaying together. Despite my feeling of abandonment, I had an erection. Then they stopped. If they had gone on much longer, I might have climaxed with them.

  “I love you,” Jerome said tenderly.

  Krista said something, but I couldn’t make it out. It was a whisper of love. I knew she was trying to protect me from hearing her tell another man the words we had shared.

  Jerome got back into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He drove for what seemed a very long time.

  We slowed and then moved in tight circles for a while. The car stopped, and both the front and back doors came open. The horn beeped. The locks clicked into place.

  “I want to buy chocolate, Jerry,” Krista said in a happy voice.

  That was the last time I ever heard Krista Arnet-Wheeler’s voice. And even though she was walking off with another man, I couldn’t be angry. She had saved my life. She had done more than anyone else had ever done for me—risked her own safety without a moment’s hesitation.

  26

  Climbing out of the SUV, I found myself at the Beverly Center shopping mall, feeling like an escaped convict but not looking the part. Two weeks before, Krista had bought me a pair of gray cotton slacks and a primarily yellow Hawaiian shirt. She’d put a small leather shoulder bag under the backseat. It contained my wallet, with two hundred dollars in small bills, and a hefty bagged lunch. I had also brought the five-hundred-plus sheets of my memoir.

  I walked out of the center and headed for Santa Monica Boulevard. From there I went west until I reached Beverly Hills. There’s a slender park along the north side of the boulevard that goes on for miles. I sat down on a park bench and ate my salami and cheese sandwich and pondered my hopeless predicament.

  Two hundred dollars could buy me a bus ticket somewhere. But where? What would I do when I got there? And what about what I knew?

  Krista had taken a chance on me. Maybe I should take a chance. Maybe Wheeler could be beaten.

  Halfway through my banana, I decided to stay in L.A. for at least a few days. After eating, I went into the public library and set myself up on the computer. I logged on using my I.D., thinking that the government might not be after me quite yet. I was hoping to find everything I could about Wheeler and Gregory and the term XT.

  I never got that far.

  Hi.

  The instant messenger was Shellyshell11. I couldn’t have thought of a better person to talk to right then. I answered immediately.

  Hi, honey. I know you probably just wanted to say hey but I’ve got some serious problems right now and I could really use some help.

  Sure, Err. I’m at my mom’s new house. She’s in Laurel Canyon. On Natterly.

  She gave me the address, and I logged off. I remembered then that she had said she was coming to L.A. The thought that I could be with someone I knew exhilarated me. Someone who wasn’t crazy. Someone who cared about me, even if only as a soon-to-be-ex-husband.

  I called a taxi. It took quite a while to find her place, since the streets of Laurel Canyon are based on mountain paths originally set down by erosion. There was no sense to them, so it cost forty-two dollars to make it to her house.

  “Hey, Err,” Shelly said at the front door of the modest-looking home.

  There she was. Mocha skin with straightened bleached-blond hair. She had the most voluptuous figure in high school, but back then she wore loose clothes to hide it. Now her flimsy coral blouse and tight ocher skirt showed off every curve.

  She kissed me. Then she kissed me again.

  “I’ve missed you, boy,” she said.

  I wondered briefly if boy was an endearment she used for Thomas. But I didn’t have the luxury of jealousy. There were men out there who wanted to cut me just to see if I might die.

  “I need your help, Shell,” I said.

  “Sure, Err.”

  Her smile turned into concern, and she stepped aside so I could come in.

  The house was actually a mansion. The body of it was down in a valley behind the facade, which was like the eyes of a crocodile that broke the surface but whose body lay below. Four steps down, we entered into a basketball court used as a living room.

  “This is your mom’s house?” I asked, forgetting my worries for a moment.

  “She married this rich guy after my father died—”

  “Your father died?”

  “Over a year ago. Mom wanted to tell you, but things were so new with me and Tommy, and he came out, so—”

  “What did he die of?” I asked, ignoring her indelicate explanation.

  “Heart attack. He was on the stationary bike.” Shelly’s voice broke, and I put my arms around her.

  It was an instinctual move. I thought about the XTs, how they blended together when they came into proximity.

  She cried, and I wondered what Gregory had found in my blood. I wondered where GT was. The image of the bone-dry corpse in my parents’ garage appeared before my eyes, and I cried along with my soon-to-be-ex-wife.

  The doorbell rang.

  I gasped so violently that my windpipe clenched, sending a pain down into my chest.

  “Don’t answer it,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there’re people after me. They want to take me away.”

  “What people?” Shelly asked. “Why?”

  “It’s a long story, honey. But you got to believe that I need to hide from them.”

  “Get into that closet,” she said, gesturing toward an oak-stained pine door. “I’ll send them away.”

  “Don’t tell them that you heard from me. Don’t tell them anything.”

  The closet was empty and smelled from varnish. I supposed that Mrs. Larman and her new husband had just moved. I strained to hear any word, but the front door was half a court away. I squatted there with my ear pressed to the wood until it came open. Shelly loomed above me.

  “Who was it?” I asked.

  “He said that his name was GT,” she said. “He said that he followed
you here on a bicycle. I’m going to call the police.”

  “No!” I grabbed Shelly by the ankle.

  “Ow!”

  “Please, baby. Let me handle this. GT isn’t the one after me. They’re after him, too.”

  “Why was he following you?”

  I didn’t know the answer to that question, so I went to the front door and opened it. He was standing there, patiently waiting for me.

  He had on black trousers that fit him, and a long-sleeved white dress shirt with the tails out and the cuffs unbuttoned. His mane of matted hair had been cut down to an acceptable length. He was smiling, and I couldn’t hold back from hugging him.

  “Dad.”

  “So what is it you’re telling me?” Shelly was asking me.

  Her mother and her new husband, Rinaldo Smith, were in Baja California on a camping trip with a group of seniors. The kitchen, where we were standing, looked onto bare hillsides leading down into the valley.

  I was drinking coffee. Shelly looked to me for the answers, but now and then she’d cut frightened stares at GT. When we were just kids, she and my father were close, so GT’s manners and ways with her were unsettling. She could see the man inside the boy.

  We tried to explain everything, GT in his way and me in mine.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The government guys think that GT is inhabited by a virus or something that wants to infect the entire world.”

  “Are you contagious?” Shelly asked the boy.

  “Only if I want to be,” he said with a smile. “And I’d have to want to, really bad.”

  “Did you cure my fingers?” I asked him.

  “They were infected, and I wanted you to see what I saw so that you could know me.”

  “So I have those XT things in me?”

  “The Wave, Airy,” he corrected. “Far beyond anything you’ve ever known or seen or believed was possible. But now you have seen it. I can tell that you have. You’ve been floating in the granite, passing through stone toward the chorus of the infinite.”