A rocking. . .
Deep in Amazonia, Nick lies face up in the canoe, terrified. He can feel the invisible people there along the riverbank. He can see them without looking. Feathers, color. Color in darkness? An arrow splashes near him. Another thunks into the gunwale. Of its own volition, the canoe moves upstream against the current. Nick is lying in the mud. Invisible people are visible now, corporal fellows. One of them takes a green gooey glob from his mouth and places it on Nick’s upper lip. The fellows gather around their shaman, chanting, “Sig-eye, pig-sty.” The shaman’s body is painted blue and white, his hair plastered with mud. Feathers pierce his skin. The invisible people pass a long wooden tube to the shaman, the end of it is placed before Nick’s nose. Nick struggles to escape, but he his held too tightly. “I notice you filed a bug on the espresso release,” the shaman says. The shaman fills his cheeks with air and blows. The green goo goes up Nick’s nose, into his brain, into his soul. It possesses him. He floats in the air. . .he dies. . .
St. Matthew floats in the air beside him. “Nine three two three three,” St. Matthew says. “Chapter nine, verses thirty-two and thirty-three. . . ” Nick sat up, gasping, drenched in sweat, and looked around him. Amazonia? Moonlight reflected off the pale white jester’s mask above his head, mocking him. Oh. Basel. But St. Matthew’s words were still with him. Nine three two three three. Would Paul have a Bible? Nick switched on the light. There, on a bookshelf on the opposite side of the room, was a green-bound Gideon’s. Thank you. Nick got it and turned to the verse:
As they went out behold they brought to him a dumb man possessed with a devil. And when the devil was cast out, the dumb spake: and the multitudes marvelled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel. . .
Nick knew without counting that there would be one hundred and sixty characters, exactly. He had done it: he had cracked Barlow’s diskette. Vividly he could recall Crazy Peter’s pronouncement to the startled passengers of Flight 44: “Gulf War Syndrome is only the beginning. I have left proof and a plan for the cure on a diskette with a friend in California.” And now, by God, with this password, Nick was going to read all about it.
He stumbled into the hall, then down it; tried to get his bearings in the kitchen. By the dim light coming from the street the room looked sad—so small, white, and tidy. He could see that there was nothing on the counters, nothing on the table. He opened a cabinet to reach for a glass. But as he did he noticed, in the corner of his eye, that there appeared to be something affixed to the refrigerator. Something small, flat, square; three inches on a side, with a hand-written label. Held there with a giant U-shaped magnet that had not been there yesterday. No, don’t tell me. Please, no.
Yes. There was no mistaking the diskette: the word MATTHEW in Barlow’s handwriting was unique, and Nick had stared at it a thousand times. And there was no mistaking what information that diskette now held: zilch, zippo, nada, hydarra; the null set.
Nick barely made it to the water closet in time, as heave after heave shook his body. After an eternity he sat back and rested against the wall. The edges of his eyes perspired as if he had just eaten a jalapeno, and his arms quivered as if he was going into hypothermia. For a moment he thought, again, that he was going to die. Then he took a deep breath, stood, found the bathroom sink, filled it, and plunged his face into the ice-cold water.
Back in the kitchen, he took the diskette tossed it on the table, feeling nothing. He had tried not to invest too much hope in finding out what was on the diskette. Without realizing it, however, he had come to equate deciphering the diskette with getting his life back. He had come to accept that he would never see Todd again, nor his brother. But if he could have found out what was on that diskette, perhaps it would have given some meaning to their deaths; perhaps he could have had some hope of a new life after this was all over. But now he saw with complete clarity that it was all pointless.
That was when he noticed something else on the table, a piece of paper: a note. He walked to the window, where there was more light. Block letters, in heavy ballpoint:
Nick. Go away. You cannot win. Run while you can. Look under your pillow. Leave right now.
Shit, Nick suddenly thought. Where’s the blood? Where’s Paul’s blood?
He jumped up and ran to the sink. The bowl was there, exactly as he had left it, with the cold test tubes still in it. Whoever had visited him in the night didn’t know about the blood, or didn’t care. Or maybe they had switched vials.
He read the note again. Look under your pillow. He ran into the bedroom and reached under the pillow; there were papers there and some kind of booklet. He took them back into the kitchen where the light was better. Outside, dawn was breaking over the city. By its rosy-fingered light he inspected a United States passport, with an airline ticket inserted between the last pages. He opened the cover and read the name Isaac Angevine next to the photo of himself. It took a while to make out the writing on the ticket, but soon it was clear: one-way, by way of London and Miami, from Basel to Mexico City.
“Fuck you,” Nick said, softly. “Fuck you.” He tore the tickets easily. The passport required a little more strength.
But what was that sound? A whispering; a muffled stampede. It was coming from outside on the far end of the apartment. Quietly Nick went to the window and looked down into the street. Good God, he had died. He was in Hades: there was an army of apparitions walking by, wraiths of Subedai coming for him. . .
No, he realized, as he resumed breathing: Fasnacht had begun. He looked with mixed awe and dread at the costumed figures with oversized heads—porcelain-faced harlequins, brooding alte dantes, the “old aunts;” leering Wagis, corpulent magistrates, and Pierrots with pillbox hats and eyes as blank as death: Moorgesreich, march of the ghosts. There was not a light on anywhere in the entire city. Across the street, above the café, he could dimly make out the form of a woman looking down from her window at the silent parade.
He went again to the kitchen sink. The test tubes were cold to the touch, but not frozen. He went into the bedroom to retrieve his travel bag, stripping off his shirt as he went. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he opened the bag and withdrew the US Army blood-transfusion field kit, along with several syringes and a roll of white tape. Quickly, methodically, he used a syringe to transfer the blood into the transfusion kit. It filled halfway: eight ounces of liquid Paul.
Awkwardly, he ran the tape several times around his torso, securing the kit to his rib cage. Then he put on a loose-fitting shirt and put the container that held the chips in the shirt pocket. He put his counterfeit Dijjy-Mike badge in his pants pocket and walked towards the door. What was he forgetting? Oh, yeah. Paul told him he had purchased a gun. Where would that be? The hell with it, he decided. Whoever had cracked the diskette had probably already taken it. If Nick had to kill anybody today he would do it with his bare hands. He picked up the diskette and put it in his pocket. He had risked his life several times for this damn thing, if he lived it would make a nice souvenir of his quaint adventure.
“Here I come, brother,” he said.
He took a deep breath and opened the door. He walked into the hall way, down the stairs and prepared to enter the silent crowd on the street. He opened the door.
A pale dead face with hints of bronze in the coloring; large sad eyes with dead black pupils; a black pillbox hat with a peacock feather sticking straight up from it: Pierrot le Fou, Crazy Peter, staring straight at Nick—with a recorder poised like a blow gun at his lips.
I loved you, Bartlett.
The Pierrot played a trill on his recorder and walked on. It was five AM.
By seven AM Nick realized that there was no more putting it off. He had stopped for coffee several times, consulted his dog-eared little map of Basel countless times. He had so memorized the street names that he hardly needed the map at all; it was more like a security blanket.
He would walk down this street, cross the bridge, go up the other street; the Digital MicroSystems lab would be right there. He would watch the people going in, choose a likely group and walk in behind them, just as he had walked into the Mill a thousand times at the tail end of a bunch of employees. As simple as that, just like Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow entering the Witch’s castle. He took one last sip of his coffee, then reached in his pocket for some change for a tip, feeling the Dijjy-Mike badge. He had no idea what any of the coins in his hand were worth, so he threw them all on the table. It wasn’t bloody likely that he would ever need money again, in any event. He kept the badge in his hand, nervously turning it as he stood.
That was when he saw the Pierrot again, the one that had been waiting for him. He knew that many of the masks looked alike; that many of them were in fact identical, made from the same mold. The costumes were identical too. There was no way to tell one Pierrot from another. But this was the one that had met him at his door this morning. He knew it.
He left, trying not to run.
He found himself wondering about Carl Swirsing, and whether the model Porsche he drove was the same as the one that had blocked his way on Emerson Street. He wondered about Pascale. Maybe I see you in Fasnacht she had said. Well, maybe.
Two blocks later he looked over his shoulder. The Pierrot was still there.
Nick needed to stay calm. Down this street, then over one. He could lose the tail by cutting through the Theatre tram stop. The street he was on would be Ausgrabben. When he looked around this corner to the left he should see the Basel Civic Opera, and across from that a large tram stop. He got to the corner, turned left. There was no Opera House, no tram stop. Instead he found some kind of school or something, with two ghostly jesters walking in front of it. He looked up; there were no signs. How had he managed to get lost so quickly?
Don’t panic, Nick.
But he was panicking. He saw the Pierrot again, running towards him. There was something in its right hand. And Nick became aware that he had dropped the badge; where, he had no idea.
He started to run. He glanced over his shoulder. He was not imagining things: the Pierrot was there, running towards him. Nick sprinted, turned right down a narrow street. It was a cobblestoned cul-de-sac. Damn my luck. He stopped, trapped. Then he saw a narrow passageway leading to another street. It was wide enough for two people to pass abreast. Nick would have to turn on the afterburners now, outrace this masked assassin. How fast could somebody run while wearing a two foot high mask, for Pete’s sake? Then he heard his name called, and even though he knew he should keep running, he stopped. He knew that voice. Who was it? He turned. Pierrot was gone.
“Maceo?” Nick said. His pulse was pounding; he was so full of fright that he could barely stand. What was Maceo doing here?
“Jesus Christ, Maceo,” Nick said. “You scared the living fuck out of me. What are you doing here?”
“Hey, I live here now,” he said. “I took a job at the Labs. I know, I know, I was going to quit when they shit-canned Docudisc. But this real interesting assignment came up; they said they would pay to relocate me here. Hey, who wouldn’t like to live in Europe? Where the hell have you been? Last time I heard from you, you were sprinting across the country. You disappear from planet Earth for weeks, next thing I know you’re running down a Basel street as if Beelzebub was on your ass. . .”
Nick was hardly listening. He was still catching his breath when he noticed the Pierrot approaching Maceo’s back.
“Get ready to run, Maceo, when I tell you,” Nick said. “Don’t turn around.”
But Maceo did turn, just in time to see the Pierrot leveling a gun at his chest. Before Nick realized what was happening three loud shots had been fired in the alleyway. Two had hit Maceo, one had hit a wall, sending fragments of masonry into Nick’s hair.
At first Nick thought he had been shot, but in a moment he realized that he was untouched. He turned his gaze to the costumed figure. With a visibly trembling hand it was pointing the gun towards the ground, where Maceo was lying on his back, looking up at Nick. Nick could see that Maceo was still breathing, barely.
What a way to go, Nick thought. Damnation.
Slowly, the Pierrot put down the pistol and removed its head.
“You?” Nick said. “I never thought I’d see you again.”