Dead and Alive

CHAPTER 54

Erika phoned Glenda, the estate provisioner, at the dormitory and asked for a meeting immediately in the staff lunchroom. This was in the south wing on the first floor, and it could be entered either from the south hall or from an exterior door.

In a few minutes, Glenda arrived at the exterior door. She left her umbrella outside and came into the lunchroom, saying, “Yes, Mrs. Helios, what is needed?”

A sturdy New Race woman with short chestnut-brown hair and a scattering of freckles, wearing an off-duty jumpsuit, she appeared accustomed to lifting and toting. As the sole shopper for the estate, her job included not just browsing the aisles of stores but also the physical labor of transporting goods and stocking shelves.

“I’ve been out of the tank little more than a day,” Erika said, “so my downloaded data hasn’t yet been complemented by enough real-world experience. I need to buy something right away, tonight, and I hope your knowledge of the marketplace will be helpful.”

“What do you need, ma’am?”

Erika brazened through it: “Boys’ clothing. Shoes, socks, pants, shirts. Underwear, I suppose. A light jacket. A cap of some kind. The boy is about four feet tall, weighs fifty or sixty pounds. Oh, and his head is big, quite big for a boy, so the cap should probably be adjustable. Can you get me those things right away?”

“Mrs. Helios, may I ask—”

“No,” Erika interrupted, “you may not ask. This is something Victor needs me to bring to him right away. I never question Victor, no matter how peculiar a request may seem, and I never will. Do I need to tell you why I never question my husband?”

“No, ma’am.”

The staff had to know that the Erikas were beaten and were not permitted to turn off their pain.

“I thought you’d understand, Glenda. We’re all in the same quicksand, aren’t we, whether we’re the provisioner or the wife.”

Uncomfortable with this intimacy, Glenda said, “There’s no store open at this hour, selling boys’ clothing. But …”

“Yes?”

Fear rose in Glenda’s eyes, and her previously placid face tightened with worry. “There are many articles of boys’ and girls’ clothing here in the house.”

“Here? But there are no children here.”

Glenda’s voice fell to a whisper. “You must never tell.”

“Tell what? Tell whom?”

“Never tell … Mr. Helios.”

Erika pressed the battered-wife sympathy play as far as she probably dared: “Glenda, I am beaten not just for my shortcomings, but for any reason that suits my … maker. I am quite sure I would be beaten for being the bearer of bad news. All secrets are safe with me.”

Glenda nodded. “Follow me.”

Also off the south hall on the ground floor were a series of storage rooms. One of the largest of these was a twenty-by-eighteen-foot walk-in cooler where a dozen of the highest-quality fur coats were stored — mink, ermine, arctic fox…. Victor had no sympathy for the antifur movement, as he was engaged in the much more important antihuman movement.

In addition to the rack of coats, there were numerous cabinets containing clothes of all kinds that would not fit even in Erika’s enormous closet in the master suite. By having a series of wives who were identical in every detail, Victor spared himself the expense of purchasing new wardrobes. But he did want his Erika to be at all times stylishly attired, and he did not expect her to choose from a limited garment collection.

From several drawers in the farthest corner of the room, Glenda nervously produced children’s clothing, article after article, both for boys and girls, in various sizes.

“Where did all this come from?” Erika asked.

“Mrs. Helios, if he learns about it, he’ll terminate Cassandra. And this is the only thing that’s ever made her happy. It’s made us all happy — her daring, her secret life, she gives the rest of us a little hope.”

“You know my position on being the bearer of bad news.”

Glenda buried her face in a striped polo shirt.

For a moment, Erika thought that the woman must be crying, for the shirt trembled in her hands, and her shoulders shook.

Instead, Glenda inhaled deeply, as if seeking the scent of the boy who had worn the shirt, and when she looked up from it, her face was a portrait of bliss.

“For the past five weeks, Cassandra has been sneaking off the estate at night, to kill Old Race children.”

Cassandra, the laundress.

“Oh,” Erika said. “I see.”

“She couldn’t wait any longer to be told the killing could at last begin. The rest of us … we so admire her nerve, but we haven’t been able to find it in ourselves.”

“And … what of the bodies?”

“Cassandra brings them back here, so we can share in the excitement. Then the trash men who take other bodies to the dump, they take the children, too, no questions asked. Like you said — we’re all in this quicksand together.”

“But you keep the clothes.”

“You know what the dormitory is like. Not an inch of extra space. We can’t store the clothes there. But we can’t bear to get rid of them. We take these clothes out some nights, take them over to the dormitory and, you know, play with them. And, oh, it’s very wonderful, Mrs. Helios, thinking of the dead kids and listening to Cassandra tell how each one happened. It’s the best thing ever, the only good thing we’ve ever had.”

Erika knew that something profound must be happening to her when she found Glenda’s story disturbing, even creepy, and when she hesitated at the prospect of dressing the poor sweet troll in the clothes of murdered children. Indeed, that she should think murdered instead of merely dead had to be an indication of a revolution in her thinking.

She was torn by something like pity for Cassandra, Glenda, and the others on the staff, by a quiet horror at the idea of Cassandra stalking the most defenseless of the Old Race, and by compassion for the murdered, toward whom she had been programmed to feel nothing but envy, anger, and hatred.

Her actions on behalf of Jocko crossed the line that Victor had drawn for her, for all of them, in the afore-mentioned quicksand. The curious sense of companionship that had developed so quickly between her and the little guy should have been beyond her emotional range. Even as the friendship grew, she recognized that it might signify a pending interruption of function like the one that William, the butler, had experienced.

She was allowed compassion, humility, and shame, as the others were not — but only so that Victor might be more thrilled by her pain and anguish. Victor didn’t intend that the finer feelings of his Erikas should benefit anyone but himself, or that anyone else should have the opportunity to respond to his wife’s tender attentions with anything other than the contempt and brutality with which he answered them.

To Glenda, she said, “Go back to the dormitory. I’ll select what I need from these and put the rest away.”

“And never tell him.”

“Never tell him,” Erika confirmed.

Glenda started to turn away, but then she said, “Do you think maybe …”

“Maybe what, Glenda?”

“Do you think maybe … the end is coming soon?”

“Do you mean the end of the Old Race, once and forever, the killing of them all?”

The provisioner searched Erika’s gaze and then turned her face up to the ceiling as tears welled in her eyes. In a voice thick with fear, she said, “There’s got to be an end, you know, there’s really got to be.”

“Look at me,” Erika said.

Obedient as her program required, Glenda met her mistress’s eyes again.

With her fingers, Erika wiped the tears from the provisioner’s face. “Don’t be afraid.”

“It’s that or rage. I’m worn out by rage.”

Erika said, “An end is coming soon.”

“You know?”

“Yes. Very soon.”

“How? What end?”

“In most cases, not all ends are desirable, but in this case … any end will do. Don’t you think?”

The provisioner nodded almost imperceptibly. “May I tell the others?”

“Will knowing help them?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. Life’s always been hard, you know, but lately harder.”

“Then by all means, tell them.”

The provisioner seemed to regard Erika with the nearest thing to gratitude that she could feel. After a silence, she said, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Neither of us does,” said Erika. “That’s how we are.”

“Good-bye, Mrs. Helios.”

“Good-bye, Glenda.”

The provisioner left the storage room, and Erika closed her eyes for a moment, unable to look at the many items of apparel strewn on the floor around her.

Then she opened her eyes and knelt among the clothes.

She selected those that might fit her friend.

The garments of the executed were still garments. And if the universe was not, as Victor said, a meaningless chaos, if it were possible for anything to be sacred, surely these humble items, worn by martyred innocents, were hallowed and might provide her friend not only with a disguise but also with protection of a higher kind.