Kings of Infinite Space

THIRTY-TWO

WITH HIS ARM AROUND PAUL, Colonel guided him back through the rec room and through the sliding-glass door, into the sticky Texas night. Without releasing Paul, Colonel paused and sent Bob Wier back inside.

“Wake him up.” Colonel nodded in the direction of J.J., comatose in the La-Z-Boy. As Bob Wier slid the door shut, Paul saw, as if through the bright gate of suburban Valhalla, Yasumi and Callie behind the karaoke console on the platform selecting songs from the computer monitor; they had put their arms around each other’s shoulders and were giggling like sorority sisters. A bored Olivia inched along the wall, surveying the movie posters. Bob Wier tugged at J.J.’s wrist, trying to pull him up out of the recliner. Then Paul was wheeled away in Colonel’s iron grasp.

“This way, Professor,” said Colonel. “Come meet our special guest.”

Paul, still clutching his empty glass, stumbled down the slope, ducking at the last instant the glowing ball of a paper lantern. For a moment he couldn’t see in the dark beyond the lantern, and he was dizzied by the screech of the crickets and the doppler whine of mosquitoes. Colonel released him, and Paul wobbled on his heels.

“Mighty good to see you again, Professor,” said a hollow voice out of the humid, high-pitched gloom. Colonel nudged Paul farther down the lawn, where it descended into a dry creek bed thickly bordered by juniper and bristling mesquite. Stanley Tulendij glided out of the dark, his pale face appearing at the farthest reach of the lantern light. He was wearing the same slacks and sport coat Paul had seen him in last week in Rick’s office, and he spidered up the slope on his long legs. “I hear you’re ready to join our merry crew.” He offered his bony hand to Paul. His eyes sparkled in the dark.

“What merry crew?” asked Paul warily.

Stanley Tulendij took Paul’s hand in his loose, cool grip. “I think we have some friends in common.” He tugged Paul by the hand down the slope. Paul staggered, and Colonel took the glass out of his hand and hauled him upright by the elbow.

“This is an important moment in your life, Paul,” he growled. “Pay attention.”

With Colonel on his left and Stanley Tulendij on his right, Paul peered into the gloom at the foot of the slope. At first he saw only the spiky silhouette of the mesquite against the pale limestone of the creek bed, but after a moment he became aware of a pair of pale eyes peering at him over the top of a bush. Then he saw another pair, peering through the thorny branches, and another, then four, five, as many as six pale faces with buzz cuts peering over or through the bushes from the dry creek bed. They shifted as Paul watched, moving around and behind each other, floating like balloons or dropping out of sight to reappear a few feet farther along or out of the shadow under a bush down near the ground.

Oh brother, thought Paul. I’m so fucking drunk.

Each pale face watched Paul with eyes that did not catch the light of the lanterns but seemed to glow from within like an animal’s eyes. The figures weren’t speaking in unison, but each murmured to himself, like the pale men in his dream that very morning. Paul could not quite make out the words, but he didn’t need to. He knew what they were saying.

Please tell me I’m drunk, he thought. Please tell me I’m not really seeing this. He staggered back from the faces, digging at the grass with his heels, trying to push himself up the slope. But Stanley Tulendij and Colonel each tightened his grip on Paul, holding him in place.

“No no no no no,” breathed Stanley Tulendij. “There’s no need to be afraid. These benighted souls are my brothers, Paul.”

“Your brothers,” said Colonel in Paul’s ear.

“Our brothers,” said the two men together.

There’s no one there, Paul told himself. I’m not really here.

“Sacked by the state of Texas, forgotten by their families.” Stanley Tulendij’s breath on Paul’s cheek smelled faintly of rot. “And cursed, Paul, yea, cursed, even unto darkness by the Almighty God himself.” His long, bony fingers seemed to curl all the way around Paul’s arm. “Who tried to drown them all at once, like a sack of puppies, washing them away into the long, cold darkness under Lonesome Knob, where they tumbled and rolled, and they rolled and tumbled—”

“Is he here?” said J.J. loudly, thumping down the slope from the house.

“Shh!” hissed Colonel.

“He’s getting the story,” whispered Bob Wier, padding silently behind J.J.

“—until they washed up deep, deep in the caves under the streets of Lamar,” continued Stanley Tulendij, “where I found them at last, after long tribulation, huddled together, in their final extremity, living off the very vermin of the caves.”

“Eating rats,” said Colonel.

“Spiders,” said Bob Wier.

“Centipedes,” said J.J.

Why can’t I see pink elephants, thought Paul, like everybody else?

“Lost men,” continued Stanley Tulendij in Paul’s ear, “broken men, shattered men, hopeless men. Drooling, gibbering, bloodless wraiths, reduced to the state of animals. They were beyond reason when I found them, Paul, driven mad by their humiliation and their nearly deadly ordeal. I offered to lead them back up into the light again, but they wouldn’t come. They wouldn’t come.”

The pale, shifting faces in the creek bed seemed to have multiplied by mitosis, doubling every few seconds, jostling each other behind the mesquite. “Are we not men?” they muttered, though Paul told himself he wasn’t hearing them; it was the whisky talking, chanting inside his head, “Are we not men? Are we not men?”

“I could not lead them home,” said Stanley Tulendij, trembling with emotion, “but I could not abandon them.”

“Why not?” chorused Colonel, J.J., and Bob Wier.

“Because they were men!” exclaimed Stanley Tulendij.

Honest to God, Paul thought, I’m never drinking Glenlivet again.

“But what could I bring them from the world above that had thrown them away and forgotten them?” Stanley Tulendij went on. “What does a lost man want more than he wants food or shelter or woman?”

Dream or not, Paul thought, here’s hoping the answer isn’t “tech writers” or “failed English professors.”

“Work,” said Stanley Tulendij tremulously. “A place in the world. A reason to live.” He squeezed Paul’s hand to the point of pain. “And what do they offer their comrades in the world above?”

“Freedom,” breathed Colonel.

“Amen,” said Bob Wier.

“Fuckin’ A,” said J.J.

The other men were all crowded around Paul now, looming at him in the lantern light. Okay, Paul told himself, if I’m dreaming the figures in the creek bed, then I’m dreaming these guys, too.

“Have you ever read the story,” asked Bob Wier urgently, “of the shoemaker and the elves?”

“It’s a pretty sweet deal,” said J.J.

“It’s a dialectic, Paul,” said Colonel, the warrior-philosopher. “They do all the work, and we get all the credit.”

“I’m dreaming, right?” said Paul aloud. He looked at his feet, hoping to see himself floating half a foot off the ground.

“It’s a kind of a dream,” said Colonel, “a dream come true.”

“Okay.” Paul sagged a bit in the grip of Colonel and Stanley Tulendij. “I’ll play along. For the sake of argument, let’s say this is really happening.”

The other men laughed. “Really happening,” said Colonel. “That’s rich.”

“Typical,” said J.J. bitterly.

“They do your work for you,” Paul said, nodding down the slope into the dark. He thought of what Nolene had told him last week about Colonel, J.J., and Bob Wier—“They don’t do a lick of work, ever” she’d said, “but every morning the work they’re not doing shows up on my desk.” The pale faces below seemed to bubble a little higher; the murmur rose to a rumble. “But what do they get out of it?” Paul said.

The four men crowded around Paul exchanged a glance.

“We offer them something from time to time,” said Colonel.

“Like a sacrifice,” said J.J. “Kind of.”

“ ‘The fire and wood are here,’ ” Bob Wier said with a catch in his throat, “ ‘but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ Genesis twenty-two, seven.”

Colonel shouldered Bob Wier aside. “Don’t listen to him,” he murmured, his breath hot in Paul’s ear.

“Okay,” said J.J., “ ‘sacrifice’ is maybe too strong a word.”

“It’s something you’ll never miss,” said Stanley Tulendij, and he swung Paul around and started to walk him back up the slope towards the bright rectangle of the sliding door. “Not really.”

Paul surprised himself by resisting a bit; he tried to twist out of the grasp of the men on either side, tried to crane over his shoulder to see into the creek bed at the bottom of the slope. All he saw was Bob Wier gnawing on his knuckle, his eyes brimming with tears in the lantern light. Then the grip on each of Paul’s arms tightened, and they marched him towards the house.

“So are you in, Professor?” said Colonel, digging his blunt fingers into Paul’s elbow.

“You’re either with us or agin’ us, Paul,” said Stanley Tulendij, tightening his grip.

“The line forms on the right, babe,” J.J. said.

Paul gave up struggling and let them carry him back towards the house. Fuck it, he thought, it’s all a dream anyway. Behind him, the murmur of the pale figures in the creek bed faded into the electric burr of the crickets. From the house came the jolly thump of a galloping bass line, and through the door they could see Callie and Yasumi dancing together on the platform, swinging their hips and singing along with the Bananarama version of “Venus,” more or less in harmony.

“ ‘She’s got it,” they sang, swing, swing, swing, “ ‘yeah, baby, she’s got it. .’ ”

The giant TV screen pulsed with parti-colored light like a sixties discotheque, and vivid greens and blues and reds washed over the faces of the five men just beyond the glass.

“ ‘I’m your Venus,’ ” sang Callie, “ ‘I’m your fi-yuh, at your de-zi-yuh.’ ”

Stanley Tulendij’s eyes widened, and he relaxed his grip on Paul’s hand.

“Who’s that splendid little filly?” he said.

“That’s no filly,” Paul said, yanking his other arm free of Colonel’s grip. “That’s my. . that’s my. .” My what? he thought.

“Not her,” said Stanley Tulendij. “The little lady at the bar.”

The four other men swiveled their gaze to the bar, where Olivia perched on one of the stools with her cheerleader legs crossed. She leaned one elbow on the bar top and picked absently at the plate of crudités. She bit a celery stick in half as if she were crunching on a human bone.

Paul started to laugh. That proves it, he thought. I am dreaming. “Olivia?” he said aloud, before he could stop himself.

The other men shifted in the dark, exchanging glances and saying nothing.

“Seriously,” said Paul. “Olivia?”

Stanley Tulendij’s eyes shone with the same animal glow as the eyes in the creek bed. “That’s a fine figure of a woman,” he said.

“Take her,” Paul laughed, “she’s yours. You’d be doing everybody a favor.”

The song pounding through the glass seemed to fade, and even the cricket shriek and the dive bomb whine of mosquitoes went away. The other men seemed to recede into the dark, and Paul found himself alone in a little bubble of silence with Stanley Tulendij. The old man turned slowly to him, the Day-Glo colors of the karaoke screen washing rhythmically across his face. His eyes were wide and bright, and his lips drew back in a skull-like grin. He took Paul’s hand and shook it gravely.

“Done,” he said, and a moment later he was gone, gliding on his long, crooked legs down the slope, under the tree, and into the dark, beyond the glow of the paper lanterns.