The Heart Goes Last - Страница 31

“Yes,” says Charmaine faintly. That was a threat: if she doesn’t eliminate, she’ll be eliminated. It’s very clear. Her hands are cold.

“Very well,” says the head. “Here are the details of your Procedure for today.” The slip of paper slides out of the slot. Charmaine picks it up. The room number and the sedative information are there, but the name is missing.

“There isn’t any name,” Charmaine says. But the head has vanished.

Choice

Stan lets his mind float free. Time is passing; whatever will happen to him is about to happen. There’s not a thing he can do about it.

Are these my last minutes? he asks himself. Surely not. Despite his earlier moment of panic, he’s now oddly calm. But not resigned, not numbed. Instead he’s intensely, painfully alive. He can feel his own thunderous heartbeat, he can hear the blood surging through his veins, he can sense every muscle, every tendon. His body is massive, like rock, like granite; though possibly a little soft around the middle.

I should have worked out more, he thinks. I should have done everything more. I should have cut loose from … from what? Looking back on his life, he sees himself spread out on the earth like a giant covered in tiny threads that have held him down. Tiny threads of petty cares and small concerns, and fears he took seriously at the time. Debts, timetables, the need for money, the longing for comfort; the earworm of sex, repeating itself over and over like a neural feedback loop. He’s been the puppet of his own constricted desires.

He shouldn’t have let himself be caged in here, walled off from freedom. But what does freedom mean any more? And who had caged him and walled him off? He’d done it himself. So many small choices. The reduction of himself to a series of numbers, stored by others, controlled by others. He should have left the disintegrating cities, fled the pinched, cramped life on offer there. Broken out of the electronic net, thrown away all the passwords, gone forth to range over the land, a gaunt wolf howling at midnight.

But there isn’t any land to range over any more. There isn’t any place without fences, roadways, networks. Or is there? And who would go with him, be with him? Supposing he can’t find Conor. Supposing, unthinkable, that Conor is dead. Would Charmaine be up to such a trip? Would she even want him to smuggle her out? Would she consider it rescue? She’s never liked camping, she wouldn’t want to do without her clean flowered sheets. Still, he has a brief flash of longing: the two of them, hand in hand, walking into the sunrise, all betrayals forgotten, ready for a new life, somewhere, somehow. With maybe some strike-anywhere matches, and … what else would they need?

He tries to visualize the world outside the walls of Consilience. But he has no real picture of that world any more. All he sees is fog.

Charmaine keys herself into the dispensary, locates the cabinet, codes open its door. She finds the vial and the needle. She pockets them, snaps on her latex gloves, then walks along the corridor to the left.

These corridors are always empty when she’s on her way to a Procedure. Do they do that on purpose, so nobody will know who has terminated which person? Nobody, that is, except the head. And whoever is behind the head. And whoever may be watching her right now, from inside a light fixture or through a tiny lens the size of a rivet. She straightens her shoulders, adjusts her face into what she hopes is a positive but determined expression.

Here’s the room. She opens the door, steps quietly in. Removes her facemask.

The man is lying on his back, attached to the trolley bed at five points, as he should be. His head is turned a little away from her. Most likely he’s staring at the ceiling, whatever part of it he can see. And most likely the ceiling is staring back at him.

“Hello,” she says as she walks over to the bed. “Isn’t it a lovely day? Look at all the lovely sunshine! I always find a sunny day is really cheering, don’t you?”

The man’s head turns toward her, as far as it can turn. The eyes meet hers. It’s Stan.

“Oh my god,” says Charmaine. She almost drops the needle. She blinks, hoping the face will change into the face of someone else, a total stranger. But it doesn’t change.

“Stan,” she whispers. “What are they doing to you? Oh, honey. What did you do?” Has he committed a crime? What kind of a crime? It must have been very bad. But maybe there was no crime, or just a little one, because what sort of a crime would Stan have done? He’s sometimes grumpy and he can lose his temper, but he’s not mean as such. He’s not the criminal type.

“Did you try to find me?” she says. “Honey? You must have been crazy with worry. Did you …” Has his love for her driven him over the edge? Has he found out about Max and killed him? That would be terrible. A fatal threesome, like something she’d see on the TV news, back at Dust. The sleazier news.

“Uhuhuhuh,” says Stan. There’s a trickle of drool coming out of the corner of his mouth. Tenderly she wipes it away. He’s killed for her! He must have! His eyes are wide: he’s pleading with her, silently.

This is more horrible than anything. She wants to rush out of the room, run back to her cell and shut the door and throw herself onto the bed and pull the covers over her head, and pretend that none of this has ever happened. But her feet don’t move. All the blood is draining out of her brain. Think, Charmaine, she tells herself. But she can’t think.

“Nothing bad is going to happen to you,” she says as she usually does, but it’s as if her mouth is moving by itself, with a dead voice coming out. Though the voice is trembling.

Stan doesn’t believe her. “Uhuhuhuh,” he says. He’s straining against the bands that hold him in place.

“You’re going to have such a great time,” she says to him. “We’ll have this done in a jiffy.” There are tears running out of her eyes; she blots them away with her sleeve, because such tears won’t do and she hopes no one has seen them, not even Stan. Especially not Stan. “You’ll be home really soon,” she tells him. “And then we’ll have a lovely dinner, and watch TV.” She moves behind him, out of his line of vision. “And then we’ll go to bed together, the way we used to. Won’t that be nice?”

The tears are coming harder. She can’t help herself, she’s flashing on the two of them when they were first married, and planning – oh, so many things for their new life together. A house, and kids, and everything. They were so sweet then, so hopeful; so young, not like the way she is now. And then it hadn’t worked out, because of circumstances. And it was a strain, so many tensions, what with the car and everything, but they’d stayed together because they had each other and they loved each other. And then they’d come here, and at first it was so lovely, so clean, everything in its place, with happy music and popcorn in front of the TV, but then …

Then there was that lipstick. The kiss she’d made with it. Starved. Her fault.

Get hold of yourself, Charmaine, she tells herself. Don’t be sentimental. Remember it’s a test.

They’re watching her. They can’t be serious about this. They can’t expect her to – not kill, no, she will not use the kill word. They can’t expect her to relocate her own husband.

She strokes Stan’s head. “Shhh,” she says to him. “It’s okay.” She always strokes their heads, but this time it’s not any old head, it’s Stan’s head, with his bristly haircut. She knows every feature of his head so well, each eye, each ear, and the corner of the jaw, and the mouth with Stan’s teeth in it, and the neck, and the body that’s attached to it. It’s almost glowing, that body: it’s as clear to her as anything, each freckle and hair, as if she’s looking at it through a magnifying glass. She wants to throw her arms around that body to hold it still, keep it in this present moment, because unless she can do that it doesn’t have a future.

She can’t do the Procedure. She won’t do it. She’ll march out of here, back to Reception, and demand to talk with the woman’s head in the box. “I’m not falling for this,” she’ll say. “I’m not doing your stupid test, so just take a flying leap.”

But wait. What will happen then? Someone else will come in and relocate Stan. The bad thing will happen to him anyway, and whoever it is will not do it in a considerate and respectful way, not the way she does. And what will become of her, Charmaine, if she fails the test? It won’t just be back to Towel-Folding, it will be into the plastic cuffs and the hood and the shackles, like Sandi; then onto the gurney with the five straps. That must be why they put Sandi in her cell: as a warning. She’s cold all over now. She can hardly breathe.

“Oh, Stan,” she whispers into his left ear. “I don’t know how things got this way. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

“Uhuhuhuh,” says Stan. It’s like a dog whimper. But he’s heard her, he understands. Is that a nod?

She kisses him on the forehead. Then, taking a big chance, she kisses him on the mouth, a heartfelt, lingering kiss. He doesn’t kiss her back – his mouth must be paralyzed – but at least he doesn’t try to bite her.

Then she sticks the needle into the vial. She watches her hands, in their latex gloves, moving like seaweed; her arms are heavy, as if she’s swimming in liquid glue. Everything’s in slow motion.

Standing behind Stan, she feels gently for the vein in his neck, finds it. His heart beats like percussion under her fingertips. She slides in the needle.