Serpent's Walk

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Monday, July 13, 2048

“I still can’t believe it,” Wrench marveled.

“It’s him, all right. Been working for us for a year or more. Rose here, recognized him.” General Copley motioned the woman forward with a freckle-splotched hand. “Captain Rose Thurley, Cadre-Commander Wren.”

“How… where did Lessing…?” For once Wrench was at a loss.

“He must be an immune. One day he wandered in, out of Pacov territory,” the woman answered diffidently. “In an old Russian bakery van. Absolute bonkers.”

“Tell ’im ’bout the girl,“ the fourth person in the room suggested the seedy-looking mercenary named Kenow. He also wore officer’s pips, but in these jumped-up settler militias — actually mere armies of occupation— insignia meant whatever the wearer said it did.

“Uh, right. Well, in the back of this van, like, he had digs fixed up for himself: a cot, a kerosene stove, and supplies. Just like a caravan… urn, trailer, you Americans call it.”

“The girl, the girl,” Kenow persisted.

“Yes, all right, but first: I had charge of border patrols then. New Sverdlovsk has frontiers and customs now, and refugee resettlement camps, and what-all. One of my squads saw this big van comin’ in. They stopped it, and there was poor Lessing, all wild, hair and beard like a soddin’ cave-man, got up in an Azerbaijani vest, Israeli army pants, and Russian peasant boots. Guns and ammo enough to do the bleedin ‘ world.” She twisted at a strand of grey-streaked, red-blonde hair; the little man in the natty, black uniform of the Cadre of the American Party of Humankind unnerved her. “Well, in the comer of the cargo compartment we seen this girl, a child, like, sittin’ propped up against the wall.”

“A real knock-out!” Kenow rolled his close-set eyes.

“A kid of twelve or so, you bloody dink! Dead as a dodo, and mummified, too, shrunk down to bones with skin stretched over ‘em wrapped in rags.” ‘

“Dead?” Wrench wasn’t sure he had heard her right. “Lessing was carting a dead girl around?”

“Hard t’get a date in these parts,” Kenow observed drily.

“Called her Emily, sometimes Mavis, sometimes Beverly. Sometimes ‘driver-lady.’ You should’ve seen her, poor little thing: dried out, like them pharaohs of Egypt. He wouldn’t part with her. Took persuadin’… three orderlies and a needle full of Narcodine… to pry him loose and get him to the hospital.”

“You knew him right away?”

“I didn’t see him then myself. The watch-sergeant put in a report, but nobody thought much about him. We used to get a dozen of these immunes every week, each weirder than the last. Dyin’ people, crazies too far gone to be helped. There was one, a Russian woman big as a gubbin’ gorilla, stark naked, painted herself all over with crosses, come in shootin’.”

Wrench motioned her to get on with her story. “Ah. When did you recognize Lessing?”

She eyed him cautiously. He sounded more like an interrogator than a man looking for a long-lost friend. “A long time after. We fed him, give him a job in the fields… a lot of the brain-damaged ones could do that much… and let him be until either he croaked or his wits came right. Nearly all of ‘em died, y’know. Most of Pacov’s immunes wasn’t really so. They was just delayed reactions. Ninety per cent went down at once, some lived on for a week or two, and a few lasted six months or more. Them who made it beyond that you could count on your fingers. We was surprised to find Lessing survived Artie Carlson… he’s our census-keeper… thought his records was snookered.”

“You knew Lessing when you saw him?”

“Right. I’d met him a while ago. We was meres together.” She tried to keep the wariness out of her voice. This Cadre-Commander Wren was said to be high up in the hierarchy of America’s ruling party.

“I knew ’im the same way,” Kenow stated self-importantly. “But I was sure fooled. Must’ve seen ’im out there a hunnert times, hoein’ away, pullin’ weeds, ‘n’ I never spotted him. He never said nolhin’ neither. Jes’ worked.”

Wrench played with the buttons on his uniform coat. He hadn’t expected Russia to be so warm in July.

The woman took up the thread again. “One day he stopped by the hospital, asked where his Emily was… the dead girl, he meant. Anyway, Dr. Casimir, on our psych-staff, was curious enough to make him tell his story. Somehow he mentioned Colonel… uh, General… Copley. Named me too. Then the rest come out. Our headquarters is just over the road from the hospital, so they sent for me.”

General Copley turned away from the one window. The view was not prepossessing: squarish, neatly painted, unimaginative Russian architeciurc, broad but uninspired streets, Soviet vehicles repaired over and over to save on the colony’s dwindling reserve of Israeli and American transport.

He addressed Wrench. “Rose called me. I knew Lessing right away. He served in my unit. Good man.” He looked somehow dull and uninterested, as though he wanted to get back to something else.

“Yeah, a good ol’ boy,” Johnny Kenow added earnestly. “Served with ’im in the Baalbek War, back in ’38. Saw ’im again in Guinea just B.P ‘Before Pacov.’ After Pacov hit I grabbed a plane, a load o’ goodies, ‘n’ the Empress Marie Leonore Therese of Guinea, we come here. Pacov got most o’ the Guineans, but me ‘n’ the Empress… she’s French… made it out. Married her.” He displayed nicotine-yellowed teeth proudly. “Now she’s got a bun in the oven… six months pregnant.”

Stories like Kenow’s were routine. General Copley scuffed one immaculate riding boot against the other.

Wrench asked, “Did he… is Lessing recovered? Did he tell you what happened to him?”

“Not much that makes sense,” Rose answered. “About some ship, a sea voyage, naval action, a storm, frogmen. And about Emily and Beverly and Mavis… a whole, bloody platoon of girl friends.” If Wrench’s information were correct, this woman had once had a passion for Lessing — which was probably why she had rescued him from what amounted to open slavery in New Sverdlovsk.

Digging was worth a try. Wrench said, “The last we saw of him, he was managing a resort in the South Pacific. The Izzies raided the place and burned it to the ground. They slaughtered two hundred and seventeen people, including nearly a hundred kids on vacation. Lessing disappeared. We figured either he went up in smoke or else got thumbed on the beach and his body washed out to sea. We never knew what happened to him… till now.”

“And you retaliated by destroying Israel with Pacov,” General Copley rapped. He had a reputation as the kind of mere who did not approve of biological warfare — or anything much longer range than a thrown rock. He preferred hand-to-hand weapons: fists, teeth, and nails if possible.

“Not us. Not true!”

“Serve the gubbin’ Yoodies right!” Kenow cackled. “Folks say they started Pacov in the first place!”

Wrench shook his head. “No truth to that story either, so far as we know.” He grinned. Congeniality was a useful trait; it would likely get him what Mulder had sent him for: Alan Lessing, miraculously alive after more than four years. The Party could use a hero, living testimony to the perfidy of the Vizzies and the Izzies, what with war now brewing in California.

He picked up his peaked officer’s cap and rubbed at its enamelled insignia, a red shield on which a black circle surrounded a white background. The circle was divided into four quarters by a thick, black cross. One day, soon, they’d open the black circle in four places, just before its intersection with each arm of the cross.

The door latch clicked. It was an orderly. He saluted and whispered to Copley.

“Seems Lessing’s got a second visitor,” Copley announced. “Another of your people, Cadre-Commander Wren. A woman.”

“That’ll be AnnelieseMeisinger. She was in Seattle when we got the news Lessing had been found alive here.” Damn it! He had tried to keep Liese from learning too soon. When she thought he was dead — and Emma Delacroix with him — she’d almost done herself in out of grief. Now this shock. Who knew what effect a deranged or brain-dead Lessing would have on her?

Liese entered in a swirl of smoke-grey dimdl skirts. She had never adopted the severe, black-and-white uniform prescribed for female Party members. Beige or pale grey suited her better, usually with black accessories. Today she had added a neckerchief of scarlet silk for emphasis. Women recognized this as a “power wardrobe”; men saw it as elegant and sexy-sophisticated. General Copley was now wide awake and paying attention, Wrench noted, and Johnny Kenow was openly admiring her. Rose Thurley gave her a per-functory nod.

Liese homed in on Wrench. “Lessing?”

“He’s fine, these people say. Some psychological difficulties ” He hadn’t had time to alert Copley and his subordinates

to Liese’s speech problems.

“Crazy as a cat in a barr’l of whiskey,” Kenow chuckled.

Wrench sent the man a warning glare. Insensitive son of a bitch! “Lessing’s still suffering from hallucinations. Wandering alone all

those years, among the ruins and the corpses ” He brightened

deliberately. “Now I have to rewrite the funeral oration I gave for the jizmo on Ponape!”

“‘Hero of the Party, martyr to the cause!’” Liese quoted, and laughed. Her voice sounded shaky, on the verge of tears.

Lessing was waiting for them in the hospital garden, seated on a lawn chair and framed by a trellis of red flowers. He stood up.

“Lessing?” Wrench heard Liese’s sharply indrawn breath behind him.

The man looked older, thinner, graying, sun-blackened, lined, and calloused with hard labor. His Russian slacks and open-necked, white shirt didn’t fit him very well. He looked like an aging farm hand.

His voice was the same, though. “Wrench?” Then: “Liese…? Hello!”

Copley shook hands, made excuses, and departed. Kenow and Rose Thurley stayed. The woman’s expression was a study in possessiveness, anxiety, and something else that ran a lot deeper than “old mere buddies.” Liese might have to watch out for herself.

“Why?” Liese gulped. “Didn’t call us!”

The blue eyes — paler than Wrench remembered — smiled, then shifted obliquely away. “No.”

“Why not?”

“No reason to comeback. Didn’t want to get back into becgeeing. Too old to be a mere. And I heard you people were busy rebuilding America. You’d have had no time… no place for me. Farming feels better: plants and dirt, rain and sun.”

Liese flicked a glance at the Australian woman. “Happy?”

“Fairly.” He waited: relaxed, calm, and patient

Wrench said, “We could have taken care of you, Lessing. We… you and I, all of us… are more than just business acquaintances, godammit. You only had to get to the American settlement in New Moscow to call us.”

“Reached Ufa,” he answered irrelevantly. “Izzies there. They nearly thumbed me.”

Kenow muttered, “Ufa’s a town down the road a piece. Yoodie headquarters for this region… our rivals, tough bunch. They want Sverdlovsk’s steel mills, heavy engineering, plastics. We got a lot of stuff they’d love to git their cottonpickers on.”

Lessing said, “Copley thinks one day we’ll have to fight the Izzies, right here in Russia.” He might have been discussing the lush, crimson blossoms behind him.

“Come home,” Liese urged softly. “Now.”

He looked at her, disconcerted for the first time. “Home? Is Sonny there?”

“He talks about this ‘Sonny’ sometimes,” Rose told her quietly. “Somebody he met in Israel, we think.”

Wrench said, “He fought there in the Baalbek War. A fellow mere?”

“Not likely. Sometimes he cries when Dr. Casimir, who’s been treating him, mentions ‘Sonny.’ Maybe an Izzie he had a bad time with.”

Lessing had overheard. He said, “He’s dead I saw him. It was his green pants I pulled out of the car.”

“He’s told us that too. About a fire, a dead city.”

“Ponape?” Liese wondered.

“No.” Lessing spoke directly to her. “Jerusalem.”

Rose shook her head. “This is where it gets vague. He’d have had to fly like a bloody rocket from Ponape to Israel in time to be there when somebody dosed the Middle East with Pacov. But then he talks about a ship at sea, a storm, and the rest I told you upstairs. Sometimes he says the ‘driver-lady’ drove him to Jerusalem. Or maybe from Jerusalem to some place else. God!”

“Does he ever ask about his comrades from Ponape?” Wrench asked. “The Swedes found bodies in the cells in ARAD headquarters in Jerusalem. One of Lessing’s friends, an Arab named Abu Talib, was among them.”

“He talks a bit about some woman named Emma. Once, under hypnosis, he yelled at somebody named Mallon to run away and hide. That’s all.”

“Emma Delacroix: a nice, old lady who’d lived most of her life in Africa. The Izzies grabbed her off Ponape, and then she disappeared. She could’ve been wounded and died en route to Israel… or later in one of their prisons. Mallon was killed on Ponape. As for Abu Talib, the Izzies had worked him over pretty bad, but the real cause of death was Pacov. We identified him from dental records. His wife and maybe one son are alive, though; went off to Saudi Arabia or somewhere.”

“Like, Lessing blocked out the whole shootin’ match,” Rose said. “What you don’t think of never happened. Lucky bugger, in a way.”

A compact, middle-aged Hungarian with bushy, brindled, black eyebrows and hair to match came bustling across the grass toward them. Rose identified him to the others as Dr. Casimir.

The newcomer looked from one to the other. “General Copley says you want to take this patient back to the United States. I don’t see why. He is recovering nicely here.”

Wrench drew on the authority of his Party uniform. “He’s one of ours, doctor. We have a duty to him.”

“Hmmph. Well. We are quite capable…”

“Of course. But your government…”

“General Copley…”

“…Has agreed with our government…”

“Your Party of Humankind…”

“Please! Lessing should go back with us. We can provide him with the best therapy available. His friends….”

“He’s at peace in Sverdlovsk,” the doctor said. “I wish you’d never discovered he was here.”

Wrench had no idea who had told the Party’s agents in New Moscow of Lessing’s presence. Kenow? Copley himself? Possibly just a “stringer” trading miscellaneous information for a few clips of American ammo — or a case of B anger pom tapes for the holo-vid.

The informant was not Rose Thurley; her face was as readable as a billboard!

“We are taking him, doctor.” Wrench glanced over at Rose. “You can come and see him whenever you want. We’ll fly you over at our expense on an American government ‘Russ-ops’ plane.”

“It’s green light by me.” The woman seemed ready to be reasonable. “He oughta go where he can be treated best.”

“Right here, in Sverdlovsk!” said the patient himself. “Wrench, I’m fine. Everything I need… Rose and Johnny and once in a while Colonel Copley to shoot the bull with.” He paused “And I really should stay close to Beverly. She can’t move around much, you know.”

“Understatement of the bleedin’ year!” Rose breathed. “That’ll be the dead girl.”

“She’s recuperating, though,” Lessing continued cheerfully. “As soon as she can travel….”

Liese turned away.

Damn it, Wrench thought glumly, this had to happen! Liese had not been well, and the doctors had put her on “cheery-pops,” the latest mood-altering drug.

Lessing got up and went to her. She turned her head, murmuring something plaintive that no one else could hear. Then she stood stiffly still, drawing in upon herself.

It must be hell, Wrench thought, to be embraced by a ghost.

“I don’t have much choice, do I?” Lessing asked. He stepped back. “You’re taking me with you to the United States?”

Liese ‘s voice was muffled but still audible. “Yes. Come. I… we… want you.”

Wrench said, “We can help, man. You belong with us.”

“Then I better go pack. Wait for me upstairs.” He sounded only mildly concerned. His healing had a ways to go yet.

They went inside, to a pleasant, pastel-blue waiting room. They sat awkwardly on formal, straight-backed, wooden chairs around what looked like a card table covered with green, plastic padding, while one of Dr. Casimir’s subordinates served them tea and buttered croissants.

Wrench busied himself with the food; it gave him time to think — and Liese time to recover. “Lessing ‘s going to be all right.” He tried to sound definitive, for Liese’s sake.

Dr. Casimir watched Liese. He gestured for Rose to go to her. To Wrench he replied, “Of course. The prognosis becomes better with each day. Tea?”

“We don’t get good tea any more. Most of the tea-producing countries are too messed up to export much.”

The doctor sipped. “It’s lemons and sugar we cannot obtain. One of the Chinese successor-republics flies tea over to us, and we’ve started to plant our own sugar beets. But the Izzies, Turks, and Pakistanis moved into what used to be Israeli territory to our south and west, and they are not so friendly.”

“Let me know what you want,” Wrench offered expansively. “We can fly you in some citrus fruit. Spain, Italy, southern France are all back on their feet and ready to deal.”

The doctor waggled an eyebrow. “Your Party of Humankind rules much of Europe now… as well as North America… eh? You can command lemons from the Mediterranean, olives from Greece, wine from France and Italy, butter from Holland… all the good things from the old days?”

“We trade, yes. But the Party doesn’t rule anyone, anywhere. There are sister-organizations in several European countries, but no international superstructure beyond a liaison committee. We have less real power, even in America, than the old political parties did. Local autonomy, that’s us.”

Dr. Casimir’s remarkable eyebrows descended in a frown. “If you say so… but I have read a bit about National Socialist ideas of local autonomy.”

“Things are different now. This isn’t the twentieth century. We don’t want secret police and ‘Five Year Plans.’ We’re for free enterprise and personal incentives.”

“Not socialism… state control by your monolithic party?” Wrench smiled. “We do support the coordination of major economic production: what the Germans called Gleichschaltung. We’re experimenting with that. The human race must manage its resources for the future. But we leave smaller businesses and industries alone; they’re more free now than they were under the ‘democracy’ of the old U.S.A., which was really bureaucratized socialism. We have less taxes, less control, fewer restrictions. America’s government more truly implements the will of the people now than it has for generations.”

“There are protests, we hear. Sectors that disagree with you?” “Sure. There always are. Fat cats kicked off the gravy train, welfare frauds made to work for their money, middlemen who actually have to produce something useful for a change. We’re setting reasonable rates of interest, stopping the siphoning off of wealth by usurers and ‘money men,’ changing over from a paper-money economy to one based on real goods. That’s only for starters. We’re also standardizing the law, doing away with injustices, cutting down top-heavy government, training the jobless, improving education, and helping the farmers keep their land. And if anybody thinks all this is easy, he’s welcome to try it!”

“And the Blacks? The Jews?”

“They’re not overjoyed. Many Blacks are emigrating to Africa, now that Pacov has almost wiped it clean north of the South African border. There are several colonies, the biggest run by an American Black, a Muslim named Khalifa Abdullah Sultani. We’re working to help him get things going. The Jews are another story. They’re used to being at the heart of government, at the top of the professions, in the media, in business and finance, and lately central in state and local activities too. When Starak took out our big cities, their power went way down. We’ve taken steps to make sure that it stays down. But they’re back at their old tricks, stirring up trouble, trying to incite the Blacks and other minorities that are left, working day and night to wreck what we’ve built. We’ll have to deal with them more strictly… and soon. Maybe we’ll send them to what’s left of Israel, as soon as the decon teams say it’s clean of Pacov. It’s certainly empty of Arabs now! Or they can join the Israeli colonies here in Russia. Either place, they should be happy. We’ll gladly help them resettle.”

The doctor gazed up at the ceiling. “The other day I mentioned ‘the vanished Russians’ to Mr. Lessing. You know what he answered? He said, ‘We are the Russians. Ring out the old, ring in the new!’”

“Smart, under the circumstances. My ancestors were English, but now I’m American, pure and simple. I don’t demand to return to my ‘homeland,’ kick out the king, and run England! The past must not dictate to the present and the future! The Jews have never been able to see this. They insist on their ancient tribal identity, right out of the Old Testament.”

“Yet you don’t want them to assimilate, to mingle and disappear into your population, do you?”

“Frankly, no. We don’t want them to change us. That’s happened enough already. When they came to America as refugees, we took them in. Then they took the place over and started remaking it to suit themselves. They turned America into a multi-racial pigsty. We’ll breathe easier when we’re completely free of them and their influence.”

Dr. Casimir glanced over at the two women, heads together as though they had been friends for years. ‘“The old order chan-geth….”’

“Changeth, yes, but not easily. You have to have a grassroots revolution to change an entrenched, traditional system. Anything less is cosmetic. We’ve learned that gradual reform is damned near impossible, especially when you’re fighting vested interests, a power elite, an Establishment. Like the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, or the Izzies’ conquest of the Arabs, a real revolution has to be tough and thorough, a clean break with the past. Such an upheaval can’t help but cause suffering.”

“Draconian. That’s the word I want. You call for a violent, harsh, and simplistic solution: a draconian answer to complex questions.”

Wrench grinned amiably. “Like giving up smoking… or booze, which I’m trying to do now. Cold turkey is hell, but cutting down little by little doesn’t work with me.”

“This is different, Cadre-Commander. We’re talking about people… and hallowed, age-old institutions “

“Yes, people who have been duped and controlled and exploited for centuries by those age-old institutions, doctor. They deserve better!”

“National Socialism?”

“Yes. Not exactly what they had in the Third Reich, perhaps, but still National Socialism. We’re working toward a world order that guides but does not tyrannize; that honors creators, producers, and workers; that helps the needy out of their troubles instead of piously tossing them alms.”

“You’re an idealist, Cadre-Commander! Or a fool. Probably both.”

“Proud to be both! We can’t go on depending upon archaic ‘tried-and-true’ solutions, not after Pacov and Starak. We have to experiment. The economists and political scientists, the darlings of the ‘liberal’ academic establishment, gave us garbage. They couldn’t predict economic or social trends any belter than the fortune-teller lady at the carnival! They handed out guesswork theories wrapped in statistics and jargon and served up with all the pontifical authority of the Vestal Virgins! They flubbed! Now it’s our turn to try.”

“So who are your economic experts? Adolf Hitler? Vincent Dorn? Your great thinker who hides behind a pseudonym and an army of bodyguards!”

The doctor was well informed. Much of what Wrench had been saying did indeed come from “Dom.” Wrench said, “Partly right. Dom’s our theorist, our historian, the one who sees best through the fog. But he can’t handle it all; the world’s too complicated. We’ve got other experts, plus the most sophisticated computer ever devised. It’s able to compare and evaluate maybe a billion variables at once, and it has data banks that contain every bit of information all the way back to Creation!”

“You would let a machine run humanity… our lives?”

“Why not? No individual or group can control all the data, much less weigh probabilities and assess long-term results. We set our goals… no machine does that for us… and then our computers tell us how to attain them.”

“Data management I can see. But decisions made by a machine? The future of the world?”

“We’ll be better off than under a lot of human leaders I can name!”

Their faces had grown flushed, and their voices had risen. Liese and Rose broke off their conversation and looked over at them. The doctor said, “And Alan Lessing? How does he fit into your computer plan for the master race?”

“He is… was… a valued co-worker. He’s also an old friend. Nothing more.”

“He was a protege of Herman Mulder, who is Secretary of State to President Outram, and Vice-President of your Party of Humankind under Dom.”

“That’s so.” Wrench regained control. “Did Lessing talk about Mr. Mulder?”

“No. He never mentions anything after his… what do you call it?… secondary school… high school. General Copley told Rose about Lessing ‘s friendship with Mulder.”

“He was Mr. Mulder’s bodyguard out in India. When he vanished in the Ponape raid, the Mulders were devastated. Now that he’s turned up like the proverbial bad penny they’re ecstatic.” Wrench paused for breath. “Lessing doesn’t discuss the present? His own experiences? What’s happening in the world?”

“He shows no interest. He doesn’t seem to care.”

“Not even about Pacov and Starak? God, the things he must’ve seen!”

“It’s like a cinema film to him. He watches but he does not participate, even when he himself is one of the actors.”

“He was always an aloof bastard,” Wrench mused. “Our society bred many like him: the ‘peripheral people,’ the ‘terminally unin-vol ved, ‘ as somebody put it. I don ‘t know if Lessing even cared that much about his wife “

“Wife? What wife?”

“You didn’t know? My God! Yes, a lovely Indian girl, Jameela Husaini. The Izzies killed her during their raid on Ponape. He never told you?”

“He never said…! Wehadno idea!“The doctor appeared angry, almost as if Lessing had betrayed him personally.

“As though she didn’t affect him, not down deep, where he lives.” Wrench lifted the lid of the pot to see if there was more tea. The stuff was strong and black and aromatic, the way he liked it.

The doctor stood up. “Wherever Alan Lessing lives, it is some place very private, beneath barriers and walls and defenses thicker than any Führerbunker.”

Wrench motioned to Liese. “Thanks for the tea. We’ve a plane to catch. Lessing should be ready by now.”

As they moved toward the door Dr. Casimir said, “By the way, Cadre-Commander, I am a Jew.”

“I had guessed it,” Wrench said. “I’m surprised you haven’t moved on to the Izzie colonies in Russia.”

“Copley doesn’t bother me. I have things to do here.”

“Things change,” Wrench replied, and smiled.