A Reasonable World

17

President Draffy was having a nightmare, a frequent occurrence lately: he was in some dark place underground, and hideous little people dressed like children were swarming around him, snapping at his legs. He knew it was a dream because he had had it before, and he was trying to wake up before they ate him alive.

Finally his eyes came open. He was alone in tangled sheets, not in the White House but Camp David. He turned on the bedside lamp; it was after three o’clock. The sky beyond the blinds was cold and dark as ink.

Sweat was trickling down his jowls and pooling at the bottom of his neck. He smelled rank to himself, like somebody who’d had a fever. He got up, took off his pajama tops and threw them toward the bathroom hamper, splashed water on his face, then patted on some cologne. The face was puffy, eyes bloodshot; he needed a shave. Hell with it. He put on his robe, went out into the sitting room and poured himself a substantial bourbon and water. He sat down, took a jolt.

The more he thought about it, the clearer it became that it was those damned kids, the ones they called “primary hosts”—infected by the parasite at birth. He wanted to do something about it; should have done it before, but he had listened to bad advice. “Buz,” he should have said, “I’m the President, and the President has to do what’s right for the country, regardless if it’s a good move politically.” He should have said, “I want this done. I don’t care how you do it.”

He took another jolt, getting angry now. God damn it, he was the President, and those goddamn kids were out to get him. Reports said that some of them showed “indications of paranormal abilities.” Translation, the little bastards could get inside your head, never mind what else. The thought gave him the cold shudders. Holy Christ, what would become of politics if somebody could tell exactly what you were thinking all the time?

He finished the bourbon, got up and poured another. All right, what should he do? No use coming up with something half-assed, they would just talk him out of it again. Next year the goddamn veep would be President, unless the Democrats got lucky, and he would never have the guts to do anything. Question was, could you get rid of those kids? Had to find that out first. A pilot operation, keep it under cover. Don’t even discuss it with Larry and Buz. He went back into the bedroom, scribbled a note to himself: “Lowry.” He took a pill, washed it down with the tail-end of the bourbon, got back into bed. And had the dream again.

The next day, after his interview with the President, Dan Lowry went back to his office and sat doodling on a pad for a while. Then he called in Jeb Kroger, who was the nearest thing to a wild man the Company had now.

Lowry briefly outlined the project the President had asked him to undertake. “Frankly,” he said, “I think we need a nut for this one. We can’t use one of our own people, we need somebody with at least some data trail of mental illness, and for our purposes I think he really should be crazy.”

“You want me to find you a maniac?”

“That’s right, but it’s got to be a reliable maniac.”

“You’re pissing down my leg.”

“No, I’m perfectly serious. Let’s use the short words, okay? We’re talking mass killing here, and not only that, killing of little kids. Somebody has to take the fall for that, and only a crazy person would do it.”

“Who authorized this?”

“It comes from the highest levels.”

“All right, just for curiosity, what does this tell us about our beloved leader?”

His name was Charles Wilson. He was a bald, unfinished-looking young man with a silly smile. He had been hospitalized for schizophrenia in 1990 and again in 1997. At the moment he was employed as an orderly in a nursing home.

Kroger and a helper misted him as he was walking down a dark street to the bus stop. They got him into the car and took him to a temp. There Kroger put a controller on Wilson’s head, like an aluminum chaplet. The controller was an in-house project, not refined enough for even limited distribution—it sometimes killed the subject. Kroger told Wilson that he hated the three- and four-year-olds on CV, that children of other ages were all right, that he hated the three- and four-year-olds, they were monsters who would destroy him if they got older, it was safe to kill them now, but later it would be impossible to kill them, he would be given the means of killing them, he would be given a job where he could kill them, he would forget all this until it was time to kill them, and after it was done he would forget it again.

In a later session Kroger said, “This ring I’m going to give you has a sliding catch in it, right here. Put out your hand. Feel the catch? All right, slide it over and look at the front of the ring. That little black thing is a plastic patch saturated with poison. When you shake hands with somebody, the patch sticks. Slide the catch back, and it’s ready for another dose.

“Now put the ring on your right hand, see if it fits. Okay. Now when the time comes, here’s what you do. When you see a child who looks about three or four, you turn the ring around so the front of it is inside your hand. Do that now. All right. Then you ask the child how old he is, or she is. If the answer is three or four, you push the catch over. Do that now. Then you ask the child’s name. Suppose the child says, ‘Billy.’ Then you say, ‘I’m glad to meet you, Billy,’ and you shake hands. Let’s pretend this doll is the child. Say the words and shake hands.”

In the little room under the humming fluorescent light, Charles Wilson said, “I’m glad to meet you, Billy,” and squeezed the doll’s cold hand.

Wilson quit his job in Washington and flew to Manila. He sincerely believed this was his own idea, and he also believed that the ring on his finger was a gift from his mother, that he had had it for years, and that it would be bad luck to take it off. He went to the employment agency the next day and got a referral to CV, where, as it happened, a position had just opened up.

The man was walking behind a floor polisher in D corridor when a woman and a little girl approached. He turned off the robot and smiled. “How old are you, little girl?”

“I’m four.”

“What’s your name?”

“Melissa. What’s yours?”

“My name is Charlie. I’m glad to meet you, Melissa.” They shook hands solemnly.

Hours later, on the way back from perm, her mother noticed that she was trying to pick something off her hand. “What’s the matter?”

“Itches.” The child got her fingernail under the thing and pulled it off. “Ow.” She began to cry.

“Missy, what is it?” There was a little bloody spot on her palm. “Oh, that’s nothing,” her mother said. “We’ll put a Band-Aid on it when we get home, and you know what? I’ll give you a lollipop.”

Eva Dean was on her way to the cafeteria with her son Tony when they passed a man with a cleaning robot. The' machine stopped whirring and settled to the floor; the man smiled and said, “How old are you, son?”

Something about him alarmed her, and she slipped out, across the grey space and in again, hearing Tony’s answer: “Three.” And he felt the man’s purpose as he moved the little sliding catch on the ring. “What’s your name?” He saw the knotted place in the energy pattern, tried to untangle it, but it was too late even to begin. “Tony,” said the child.

“Glad to meet you, Tony.” A fierce hating joy as he clasped the child’s hand, felt the ring press home. And he was out again, into the child, feeling the irritation under the little plastic patch, of which the child himself was not aware. What was to be done?

At the next intersection he slipped out and into a Wackenhut guard, but that was no use: then into a middle-aged woman on her way to the mall, then into a clerk, and it was all useless. Ever since San Francisco there had been only three of her on the Main Deck; the others had all been flushed out by the Wacks with their detect-and-destroy machines. Perhaps there were others on other decks, but there was no way to find out; d&d machines guarded all the elevators.

She could not destroy the madman, there were not enough of her. But she must, or he would kill all the babies.